


Rise to the Challenge

by Skalidra



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman Beyond, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Meet the Family, Time Travel, Training
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-17 02:12:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3511406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/pseuds/Skalidra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Jason, waking up in a strange alley isn't new so much as it's frustrating, and realizing he's either been flung into the future or is trapped in some kind of mental world is even worse. For Terry, reports of a vigilante with a knife are just another night at work, and he's got no idea who he's hunting down.</p><p>(AKA - new-52!Jason meets Batman Beyond!Terry, and is very unimpressed.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello again! Welcome back, and accept my (sorta-)apologies for the lateness of this. Daylight savings hit me hard, and I've been exhausted all day. Pretty much all I could do to focus myself enough to write my thousand words.
> 
> So, this is a mashup of the current canon new-52 universe, and Batman Beyond. Now, I admit, I haven't read any of the BB comics, but I know some of the backstory bits it features through wikia pages and such. This is after the BB movie, and the end of the show, but not by much. For Jason, it's a bit more of an unspecified point, since continuity in comics is... hard. The important parts being that he's still teamed with Roy and Kori, but Damian's death/resurrection hasn't happened yet. (I am still so pissed, by the way, that this was not made a much bigger deal in the comics. Jason should have _flipped out_ at Damian dying, and definitely been a lot more adverse to resurrecting him _damnit_. Jason _knows_ the kind of crazy resurrection can make happen. On that same vein, how absurdly bitter should Jason be with Damian? He gets resurrected all nice and clean _and_ gets super powers out of the deal?)
> 
> Anyway, this happened because while I was watching BB, all I could do was slowly grow to like Terry, and be really frustrated that apparently he really never learns to dodge. That boy gets hit with _everything_ , seriously, even after his 'training.' So, this is a mix of frustration over that, irritation that Bruce apparently doesn't care that Terry depends on the suit, and, I admit, a desire to see Terry get his ass handed to him by a (real)ex-Robin. Also, wondering where exactly Jason went in the BB universe. We get Dick, and then it jumps straight to Tim, and the exclusion of Jason in media always bothers me.
> 
> Enjoy!

When I open my eyes to an alley floor, and the gritty feeling of dirt and asphalt pressing against the skin of my wrists, it probably should worry me more than it does. Normal people get freaked out when they wake up in random places, especially in random alleys. But, since I am definitely _not_ normal, instead I push up and turn, scanning the alley around me and deciding two things, after a moment.

One, I'm alone, and two, this is one of the cleaner alleys I've been in, in at least the past few months. It's honestly a little weird; I'm kind of used to Gotham's grime, not that most of the world is any better. Being in any alley that doesn't stink — half the reason I adopted my helmet design was for filtration — or feel like it's got years of dirt, blood, and _fuck_ knows what else ground into it, just doesn't feel right. Gotham never disappoints though, right?

I might be on bad terms with pretty much everybody _in_ Gotham, and it might be a total shithole of a place, but it's still home. Can't change that.

I evaluate myself next, taking a glance down and making sure I'm at least basically in one piece. Waking up in random alleys probably isn't as unfamiliar as it should be, but there's usually some kind of reason behind it. Nothing _I_ can see though. Nothing hurts, I'm completely in costume including my helmet, and apart from a few scuffs of dirt on the inside of my wrists from how I was lying on the ground, I'm totally untouched. A quick pat down confirms that I've still got all my weapons too. What the hell?

Is this a prank? Roy and Kori wouldn't do this to me, but maybe a Bat got hold of me? I can imagine Damian doing this, the little _shit_ , or maybe Dick. But if it was Dick, I'd know it. It would be way more than enough for him just to have pranked me at all, he wouldn't leave me clueless in an alley. Especially because he knows that when I don't know what's going on, people tend to get hurt until someone tells me, and I'm not real choosy with _who_ gives me that info.

I don't remember anything. Roy, Kori, and I were on our island, we'd kicked some ass and it was a nice relaxation between that and whatever we chose to do next. I'm pretty damn sure that all I did was just go to sleep in my own room. That's it.

Poof, apparently. Poof and I'm in all my clothes again, which is even a little more disturbing.

I look up, but whatever two skyscrapers I'm between are too close together to give me any clue of the city beyond a black sky. Night then. Same night, or a different one? Our island isn't real close to any kind of major city. Nothing with buildings this tall, anyway. No visible stars, so there's some serious light pollution here. No surprise. Cities aren't known for their good views of the stars, and I can definitely hear the ambient noise of a full on city in motion. Can't see the moon from here, so it's hard to know exactly what time it is, and I haven't got anything on me that's nice and convenient to check that on. Being off the mercenary life but still on the 'all law enforcement wants me in chains' list kind of nixed any idea for a cellphone, and watches break easily. The point being, it's firmly night and the city is still going, so it's a big one.

Well, might as well figure out where the fuck I am.

I head for one end of the alley, what looks like the busier end, and slip out onto the street itself. I'm suddenly _really_ glad that my helmet is on, and no one can see the expression of what must be pure shock on my face.

What. The. Fuck.

Alright, so the massive skyscrapers aside — it could be Gotham, or Metropolis, if I didn't look that closely — and the concrete under my feet that looks just like any other sidewalk, this city can't be on Earth. There are humans walking down the streets, sure, and their clothes are even basically normal if you ignore the weird hair cuts, but those are _hovering cars_ , and there are more above me that are _flying_.

Okay, _wait_. Think rationally for a second. Those are still humans. So maybe not an alien planet, maybe just the future? An alternate universe? There was _just_ that whole thing with those Earth-3 clowns — morons actually thinking that I'd _work_ for them — so it's not like it's that far out of the range of possibilities. I don't know why I'm wherever the hell _here_ is, or how the fuck it happened, but there's gotta be an explanation. Shit like this does not just _happen_.

But then it could all be some kind of trap. A bad drug trip, a mental world created by my own fucked up head from some injury, or maybe some kind of virtual reality world. Magic, maybe? This would be a lot of trouble to go to just to take me out of play — probably not — permanently. There are a lot of worlds, or just scenarios, that would be a _lot_ more believable; this is pretty out there.

Well, before I go slitting my own throat to see if I wake up, I should probably at least look around and see if I can figure out where I might be. Or when. If there's any clues about why I'm here, or who did it. There's gotta be something, right? Nothing like this is ever totally devoid of clues, and I'm not the detective kid — Tim is, the little bastard — but I'm decent enough at it.

Weirder shit has happened, I guess. Besides, I'm not so new at being out of my time, if that's what this is. A lot of Ducra's teaching wasn't really in a _time_ at all.

One of the people walking by me — a young twenties woman, short dress, decent legs but not great — does a double take, dark green eyes widening, and then gives a sharp shriek of fear and takes off in the opposite direction. Pretty fast, actually, for the heels she's wearing. Of course, she draws attention, and after a few seconds I've got the attention of pretty much pedestrian on the street.

Great, awesome; just what I _didn't_ want. Well, at least people in wherever-the-fuck can still recognize us masks when they see us. It's not like I'm real subtle though, even if I'm actually on the more subtle end of the costumed freaks. No bright tights for me, thanks anyway. If I ditched the sheath on my right thigh and the holster on my left, zipped my jacket up, and took off the hood and domino under it, I could totally pass for a civilian. I know, I've done it before.

Too late now though, and even in my fake civvies I wouldn't fit in with this style of clothing. Shit.

The screaming starts, and I watch the pandemonium spread. I resist the urge to throw my hands in the air and instead just snarl behind my mask at how easily normal people scare. I was just _standing_ there, I didn't even do anything. I didn't even _go_ for a weapon, come _on_. Yeah, this is just great. Ten feet into wherever I am and I scare a street into hysteria, that's just _wonderful_.

This is ridiculous. I miss Gotham civilians. At least they knew to just melt into the background or stay the fuck out of the way of anyone with a mask, villain _or_ hero. _They_ knew that screaming, unless you were in immediate, about-to-die danger, only got you on the radar of people you didn't want to mess with or be around. If the villain isn't actively fucking with you, for the love of _god_ don't get his attention. What is _wrong_ with people, don't they learn?

Yes, I am totally aware that I look like a villain. Guns, knives, and leather jackets aren't usually a normal hero thing. Like I care. I'm not really a _hero_ either, am I? Not for a while now.

Well. Fuck. I suppose, at least, causing a ruckus is a decent way to get whoever the fuck is in this city to come after me. Almost everywhere has got a hero or two, right? And heroes come after anyone in their city, if they've got the time. We can talk things out. Or, I can beat the fuck out of them and _then_ we can talk things out. That's more likely.

So, heroes or cops. Which one's going to show up first, and how big of a mess do I want to cause to make it happen?

I'd like to keep my ammunition — who knows where I could find more in a place like this? — but I can do some decent damage with just my knife and fists. Probably. I'm not much for fucking with civilians though.

 _Or_ , better idea, I can go find the seedier parts of town — there are _always_ seedy parts of a city, doesn't matter how 'great' it thinks it is — and beat the shit out of some bastards down there. There's gotta be crime in this city somewhere, right? Nothing brings a hero out faster than somebody else fucking with their job; they tend to get territorial about that kind of stuff. Especially when their 'job' ends up a little more broken than they like.

Then the only questions are where is it, and how do I get there without causing a riot or something? Not that that's a bad way to get attention either. I suppose I should stop somebody and have them point me in the right direction, maybe even steal one of those fancy flying cars. Roy's the pilot, but I learn fast and it can't be all that different from a normal car, right? Just one more direction. Sounds fun to me.

I crack my knuckles, take a look around for the nearest pedestrian, grin behind my helmet, and shove off the concrete sidewalk in a run.

* * *

"Hey, you picking these reports up?" The information flashing at me from the Batmobile's readout is pretty basic, transcribed police chatter. They're talking about some kind of vigilante on the streets who apparently stole a car, crashed it into the side of some building, and took off into the lower sections of Gotham's streets. No one they recognized. Could be good or bad.

Bruce makes one of those 'hnn' noises that means 'why yes, Terry, I saw the reports and they do interest me,' and I roll my eyes. Someday the old geezer's gonna figure out how to actually communicate, and not rely on me understanding his grunts and stares. I hope. Yeah, not happening.

"I'm gonna check it out," I tell him, turning the Batmobile to dive through a couple buildings and towards the section of city that the reports are coming in from. "Slow night anyway."

" _You'll have to look for him, police lost track_ ," Bruce says after a moment, and I've gotta assume that he's reading or listening to the actual chatter and must have more information. " _Reports say he's armed, a knife, but no one's been hurt. He doesn't seem to be targeting anyone._ "

"So what, some random guy with a knife, but he's good enough to dodge the cops?" I tilt the handles, easing the car into a dive down past a few roads and towards the bottom of some of the buildings. Tighter down here, can't go as fast, but whoever the new guy is he's supposed to be down here. Gotta be something more if they're calling him 'a vigilante;' guys with knives aren't exactly chatter-worthy. "Got any ideas?"

" _Some_ ," and _that's_ the tone of 'but I'm not telling you any more'. Great, schway.

You'd _think_ that after his whole 'don't tell the new kid anything' idea nearly got me killed by the Joker the first time around, that maybe he'd actually start giving me information that might be important. Nope; _never_. Guaranteed he's got ideas about who this guy might be, but am I gonna get to know them? Of course not. Why would I?

"Any I should _hear?_ " I press, gritting my teeth for just a second. No answer, and I shove out a breath in something a little like frustration. "Alright, nevermind. I'll let you know when I find him."

It's kinda dumb, and Bruce is going to bitch me out later, but I shut off the comms in the suit. I breathe where he can't hear me, taking a corner just a _little_ faster than I need to. Just a few minutes. Once I'm on the ground I don't have to think about any of Bruce's habits of keeping me in the dark, it'll just be me and whoever this new guy is. Who runs around with a knife these days, anyway? That's kind of old school, why not have a gun or some kind of other tech weapon? Everybody else does.

Might actually be kinda nice to fight somebody who doesn't have some kind of bizarre tech advantage — I am _so_ done with fighting Shriek — or is a meta. Just a nice, normal guy with a knife, who stole a car. Sounds pretty good, sounds easy. Easy is so rare these days. Gangs are always in groups, and anybody with a name is always a pain.

Maybe I'll actually get a decent amount of sleep tonight.

Since no one can hear me, I snort. Yeah _right_. I'll get a decent night of sleep the same time Gotham doesn't have any crime, and even then Bruce would totally force me to patrol anyway. Wouldn't trust the silence. He's so…

I shake my head and shove out another breath. It doesn't matter. Bruce is never going to change, so I've just gotta deal with it. I'm so not dumb enough to think that I can just be Batman on my own. I need the suit, and like it or not I might not do much good without the old man backing me up. I've got Max, but that's not the same. I don't want to put her in any more danger anyway, she's in this too deep as it is.

I turn another corner, slowing the car down as I match up the streets with the last reported location of this 'vigilante with a knife'. Right, and from here it's just searching until I find him. Guess I'm on my own with that one. Cops lost him, and I'm not in the mood for Bruce's half-answers. I'd rather get this done myself than have to wait around to go to wherever Bruce tells me to, without him ever actually telling me _why_ I'm doing it.

Slag his 'no time for explanations in combat' thing. When I'm not _in combat_ , I'd like the explanation.

Alright, well, the reports said the guy was headed into the lower streets of Gotham, and if I just follow the pattern of his sightings… No, too easy. This guy lost the cops, and they'd have thought of that. Alright, so he _didn't_ keep going the direction he was. But whatever he was doing he was definitely headed a specific way or place, so he wouldn't go too far away from it would he? But the cops — at _least_ Gordon — would have searched whatever area he was clearly headed to. If he lost them, he knows that too.

Am I thinking too hard into this, giving this guy too much credit? Better to overestimate him though, right? He's probably just some crazy guy with a knife who got lucky, but…

I bring the Batmobile to a midair stop.

"Computer, show a heat scan. Three blocks in all directions."

I wait while the computer works, humming around me. This is probably dumb. There's gotta be a ton of people within the three blocks and I don't know how I'm supposed to tell one guy apart from all the others. It's not like a heat signature will read any differently for some nutjob than a regular civilian. But I've gotta try something, right? If he wasn't just lucky, if he really _did_ lose the cops on purpose, then it would never be this easy to find him anyway. Would it?

" _Request completed_ ," the computer chimes at me, and I take a look as the results of the scan pop up on the readout.

Yeah, that's a _lot_ of people. Apartments, streets, all displayed as little red dots moving about their business. I'm never going to find one person in all of that. I mean, are there any of the dots moving oddly, or something? I'm really not so great at this seeing patterns things. Usually when I notice things they just kinda, click in my head. I don't do the collect clues thing like Bruce does. Either I've got something or I've got nothing. Bruce calls it 'subconscious recognition' or something.

All it really means is I end up feeling useless until I've got everything I need, then it clicks and I'm rushing off to go stop something.

Speaking of stopping things, that's actually an interesting looking group of dots down on street level. In an alley, of _course_. Eight, three to each side and two in the middle. Looks a bit like someone blocking off escape routes. It's not my guy, but I'm already down here so I might as well check it out. Bruce said no one had been hurt, so apart from wrecking a car and wasting some of the cops' time, the guy with the knife hasn't actually done anything yet, has he? He can wait.

I glance down before disengaging from the car, dropping through the hole and snapping out my wings. They're about a block away, but the rocket boots make short work of the distance and soon enough I'm clinging to the side of the building above the alley, looking down. Well whaddya know? Jokerz, lousy dregs. Seven of them, three blocking each side of the alley while the last one messes with a guy in the middle, some middle-aged man in a suit. Poor sucker probably just got ambushed, or dragged out here. You never know where the Jokerz might show up.

I click my comms back on, watching the 'fight' below. At least they're not hurting him, yet, just chasing him around with what looks like a tube of red paint. He might get some stains on his suit, and mouth, but it shouldn't hurt him.

" _Terry,_ " Bruce says almost immediately, and I can hear the _disapproval_ behind my name, I wince. " _Did you find our suspect?_ "

"No," I admit, "but I ran across a group of Jokerz. I'm gonna take them down first, then keep looking. Figured you should know."

" _I appreciate you keeping contact_ ," he says dryly.

"And I appreciate you telling me your theories," I snap back, and then lean my head against the wall and wince again. "Slag. Can we not do this right now?"

" _Don't waste any time_ ," Bruce answers, his tone flat and cold like it always is when I've said something I shouldn't have. Slag it, I didn't mean for things to go like this. " _You have work to do._ "

I fumble for words for a second before shaking my head and dropping down off the building. I'm not in the mood to offer any kind of mercy, or a chance for them to just get out while they can, so I drop straight onto the ringleader. The guy in the middle, tormenting their victim of the night. I can feel his shoulder snap under my foot as I slam him into the floor, and he cries out in pain, but all it makes me feel is a little satisfied. He won't be getting back up, and maybe the hospital trip will make him rethink his life.

"Who's next?" I ask, shifting my weight off the Jokerz' leader and straightening up. One runs, but the rest are as dumb as I've come to expect and charge straight at me. Some have weapons, small things, but it doesn't matter.

The victim gets out while he can, and I take the remaining five Jokerz down hard, and fast. Alright, maybe I draw it out just a little bit to get in one or two more punches. It's therapeutic for the frustration, but at least I know that I'm doing it. I could be ignorant of my own slagged behavior, that'd be worse. One scores a lucky hit against my back that stings a bit, knocks me off balance for a second, but it's barely even enough to hurt. It's definitely not going to leave a bruise, not through the suit.

The last one goes down with an uppercut to the jaw, hitting the ground with a solid thwack, and I send an alert to the Commissioner before snapping my wings out and taking off. Her cops shouldn't be far, not if they're still hunting tonight's mystery man. The Jokerz shouldn't be there for more than ten minutes, tops. It shouldn't be enough time for them to even be awake, let alone out of there. Don't even need the evidence to convict them, being in the gang is enough of a crime in the law's eyes. Fun how that works.

I get an alley or two away — it's a nasty part of town, there's _gotta_ be more would-be criminals around here somewhere — before I catch a flash of red and a figure darting around the edge of a wall. I react more than I think, taking a sharp turn and following. Could be legal, could be _not_ , best to check.

I get around the wall, and movement snags my focus as that same figure ducks around the other end of the wall, maybe a hundred feet away. A boost of my boots takes me there, and I skid to a stop against the concrete floor, looking down the section of alley. There are _way_ too many alleys down here, seriously. It feels like every one leads to another two. It's ridiculous. This one's fairly well lit, with a stairwell on one side and one thick metal dumpster on the other.

I scan briefly, and then my mystery figure straightens up from behind the dumpster, stepping out into the center of the alley. He's tall, muscled but not with the same bulk as the pictures I've seen of Bruce when he was younger. He's covered neck to ankles in black armor, with heavy looking combat boots and what looks like an upgraded red motorcycle helmet with white lenses for eyes. Not so different from a mask. There's a dark brown leather jacket over his torso and a… is that a red _bat_ symbol on his chest?

This has gotta be my guy.

He brings his hands — covered in thick gloves that glint at the knuckles with what might be steel — together in a slow clap, head tilting a bit to one side. "Decent work with the gang over there. Slow, kinda sloppy, but decent." He sounds fairly young — maybe early twenties? — and there's a distortion to his voice, through the helmet, that sounds really purposeful. Guess the cops weren't wrong about pegging this guy as a vigilante.

Good or bad, though? And what's with the _bat?_ Don't tell me this guy is some kind of fan or something. That'd be beyond creepy.

"You got a name?" I ask, watching him, and he shrugs carelessly, hands dropping. Hands dropping dangerously close to a knife in a sheath on his right thigh, and a closed holster on his left. So, not just a knife then. I tense.

"Everyone does. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours, kid."

"I'm not a kid." The answer is automatic, and I grit my teeth for a second before spitting out. "Missed the world recently, dreg? I'm _Batman_."

His head tilts further, I get the impression that he's staring at me through his helmet, and then he flatly says, "You've gotta be fucking kidding me." My teeth grind together, and then he's _laughing_. Okay, as if I wasn't in a slagged mood already. Getting mocked and then laughed at by some complete stranger in a red helmet is pretty high on my list of things I'm _not_ in the mood to deal with. Not right now. "Oh, _kid_ ," the guy says, and I stop myself from flinging something at him just because I'm _pissed_ , "I _know_ Batman. You're not anywhere near him. Pick somebody smaller to impersonate, kid."

What is this, like another Joker come back? Some old villain from Bruce's past? Haven't there been _enough_ of those already? When the hell are his mistakes going to stop coming back to bite _me?_

"I don't _care_ if you believe me; I'm the only Batman in Gotham, _dreg_."

I fling a batarang at him, and he _moves_. The knife comes out in his right hand, and he slices my batarang out of the air like it's nothing, like it's _habit_. What the—? It ricochets off the alley wall, skittering to a stop on the ground between us, and he flips the knife in his hand. Idly, spinning it through his fingers without a glance or what even looks like real attention.

"Gotham, huh?" His voice is quiet, and then he snorts. "City's let itself slip, if they call _you_ Batman."

" _Terry?_ " Bruce says in my ear, and I flinch just a little bit. Oh, _slag_ , I forgot to tell him that I'd found our guy. Or he'd found me. " _What's going on?_ "

"Now how about you be good, little bat, stop pretending you can even _try_ owning that name, and you take me to the _real_ Batman before I decide to cut that costume off you bit by bit?" The guy's voice is dangerously low, and he's stopped spinning the knife. He looks… poised, _ready_ , and honestly a bit like Curare. Is this guy an assassin like she was?

I hear a noise from Bruce, a strange, half-aborted gasp. " _Terry! Get out of there,_ _ **now!**_ " Just the tone jerks me backwards — Bruce doesn't usually _shout_ like that, and he sounds _frantic_ — but then the mystery guy is moving and leaping at me, and I react.

I fling another batarang at him, following it close up with a second, and he slashes away the former and ducks under the latter, and then he's in my face. The knife swings at my chest, and I gasp and scramble away as it slices through my suit like _butter_.

"Slag!" I spit, as wires spark across my chest, exposed circuitry bright, red, and almost a perfect horizontal slash through the symbol on my chest. Intentional? If this is an old enemy of Bruce's it'd make sense if he hated bats, I guess.

I kick up at him, blasting my boot to try throwing him back, but he slips around me like water, moving with an easy grace that kinda freaks me out. A second slash opens a line on my side, and then he's behind me and there's the press of something against my low back a second before I get _blasted_ , electricity dancing and clinging its way up my frame.

I shout in pain — oh I _hate_ getting fried like this, the suit needs better electrical protection for its user, _slag it_ — and jerk away, crashing to my knees and bracing against the ground with one hand. On the plus side, at least the suit always still _works_ after getting shocked. I turn and fling one more batarang at him, not surprised when he leans away and it vanishes harmlessly behind him, and he kicks me in the side. He's _fast_ , but while I can't block the kick it doesn't hurt that much. Not much strength behind it. I recoil a bit, but then return fire with a roll backwards, blasting both rockets up at him for a second as I do a handspring back to my feet, keeping him off me.

"Is that it?" I taunt, and he gives a dark laugh that sounds straight up _vicious_.

" _Terry, listen to me. You will_ _ **not**_ _win this fight, you have to_ _ **run**_ _. Run!_ "

"Suit gives you some protection does it, kid?" the guy asks, clearly not expecting any answer. " _Good_."

He leaps at me again, crossing the distance with two steps of his long legs, and I fling smoke pellets at my feet. They crack, explode, smoke filling the air around us and blocking vision, and I slip to the side and jump, spreading my wings to get off the ground. Bruce doesn't freak out like this often, and he pretty much never tells me to run. If he is… this could be bad. Whoever this guy is he's obviously dangerous, even if he seems to not have much more than some basic weaponry.

Something _slams_ into my throat as I rocket up, and I choke and collapse back down, into the smoke and against the ground. Slagging _hell_ I can't breathe. _I can't_ … _Slag!_ I heave for air, turning on my side and gasping, _choking_. Something cracks into my jaw, sending me spinning up and back down on my other side with the force, and it _hurts_ even through the suit. _Badly_.

"Sorry, kid," the guy mocks from somewhere above me, and the suit's vision is flickering a bit with static. "No visibility doesn't mean much for me, and the helmet's got filtration. Does the suit? Looks like your mouth's open to me; must suck to be breathing in all that smoke, huh?" What I'm pretty sure is a boot presses down on my shoulder, shoving me against the ground chest first. "Or I guess you'd need to be _breathing_ , wouldn't you? Let me know when you can speak again, kid. I've got a question or two I want answers for."

" _Terry!_ " Bruce shouts, and my first half-successful gasp at air drags the smoke into my lungs, which burns like a bitch. I cough it out, feeling the press of the stranger's boot against my shoulder, and then his hand around the back of my neck.

"How about we get you out of the smoke, kid?" he taunts, letting me out from underneath his foot as he drags me up off the ground and then down the alley by my neck.

"Get _off_ me," I snarl haltingly, getting a foot underneath me and twisting, jerking away from his grip. His fingers lose purchase, and I kick out at where I'm pretty sure his legs are. The smoke is thinning out, but it's not thin enough for me to get more than a vague outline of him. Still, I'm _pretty_ sure I'm aiming the right way.

I don't hit anything, but nothing hits me in the next second either. I don't bother getting to my feet, I just activate my boots, fling out my wings, and get the slag out of there. I clear the smoke fast, heading pretty much straight up as soon as I even out. Bruce is right, this guy is a little past what I can handle and I like being alive. I don't know if he was going to kill me, and I don't want to find out. Chances are good it's a yes. Bruce doesn't get this loud over people who just want to beat me up; only when I'm in serious danger.

There's a loud _bang_ that makes me flinch, and something hits my left boot. It knocks me off balance, making me veer, and I wince at a sharp, burning pain along the side of my ankle. I recover, reactivating my boots, and then the suit flickers warnings at me as the left boot doesn't activate. The sudden lack of balance veers me sharply over to that side, and I _slam_ into the side of the building with all the force of my rockets behind me.

Hitting the ground almost feels softer.

I groan, Bruce shouts in my ear again — what it is I have no _idea_ — and a shadow falls over me. I force my eyes open, glaring up at the dreg standing over me, trying to ignore the aching left side of my jaw, and my still really sore throat. What has he even been hitting me with? Is he another enhanced guy? Meta? Bionics? Humans don't get that strong, do they? The suit can take a whole lot of damage before any of it gets through to me; I don't even bruise that often. This is going to be a whole lot of nasty bruises tomorrow though. If I make it to tomorrow.

"Uh-uh," he says, shaking one finger at me. His other hand is holding what I'm pretty sure is the gun from his holster, but it doesn't look like anything I've seen before. Not that I can remember anyway. Dark metal, with an obvious barrel, but it just… Got it. It looks like the ones in history museums. Was that the 'bang?' Did he shoot me with it? "Questions, remember? Guess you can breathe now, that's good enough for me."

The suit's vision sparks a little bit, fritzing out so I lose sight of the guy for a second, and I drag myself up to my elbows, thinking of what I've got in my belt. Smoke obviously isn't going to help, it hurt me more than it hurt him, and he said the helmet had filtration so my gases aren't going to do anything either. So I've got specialty batarangs, anything to shock him with, and… and Bruce. I've got Bruce.

"Any ideas?" I hiss under my breath, as the guy above me shoves the gun away and draws his knife in the same breath, never looking away from me.

" _Terry, you_ _ **have**_ _to get out of there. You can't fight him._ " Yeah, no kidding. But what am I supposed to do? Can't fly with the other boot fried, and I've got this sneaking suspicion that just running is going to work about as well as it did the first time. I'm going to get hit, _hard_ , and end up right back where I started.

"Can't," I say shortly. "Boot's fried." The guy's head tilts, considering me, and I draw my legs up, getting myself together for… whatever I might be able to do. Being at least able to move will be good regardless of what he's going to do.

" _Then you'll—_ "

"Got someone in your ear, kid?" I flinch, Bruce cuts off, and the guy takes a step forward towards me. I was quiet; how the hell did he just guess it just like that? "I'm going to give you two chances to tell me where the _real_ Batman is, then it's going to start hurting. Understand me?"

"Slag you," I spit, and he crouches down with an ease that reminds me of Stalker. "I'm not telling you anything."

"That's your first," he says calmly, and he draws something out of his jacket with his free hand. Some kind of smaller metal device with a handle and two points. "Trust me, kid. You don't know pain the way I do, and I can make you tell me anything I want. Last chance before we get nasty."

" _Terry—_ "

"No!" I snap, at both of them, clenching my hands. This is probably — no, _definitely_ — going to hurt, a lot. I'm not selling out Bruce, it's not going to happen. The last time he had to come save me he nearly got killed by Inque, I don't want to do that again. Not ever. Old man deserves to die on his own time, doesn't he?

The guy's hand snaps out, and I jerk backwards but he's just plain faster than I am. The two pointed ends of the device dig into my calf, and I have time for a sharp breath in before electricity arcs over the suit. I shout and arch, the heavy whine of the suit trying and failing to compensate driving into my ears. It hurts, but I knew whatever the guy did to me would. Pain's not a real new thing to me anymore, and I've been shocked before. A lot. I can deal.

It feels like a long time before he pulls the thing back, and I drag in a thicker breath, tasting blood in my mouth. I'm still twitching, and the suit is blinking all kinds of warnings at me, but I'm alive, and I'm not unconscious. Those are definitely pluses, right? Well, maybe the unconsciousness might be better, but I'll stick with at least being alive is good. I groan, clenching my hands and trying to pull enough strength back to throw a batarang, move; I'll take just about anything right now.

" _Terry, listen to me._ " Bruce's voice is strong in my ear, quiet and firm. " _Repeat_ _ **exactly**_ _what I tell you to, alright?_ "

"Let's try this again." The guy's voice is just about as firm, almost flat, and he's flipping his knife in his other hand. At least he's not using it, _yet_. No illusions there. "Batman, kid. Tell me where he is and I'll just tie you up, knock you out, and leave you somewhere safe till my business is done. Otherwise, I can do this all day. Have before, actually."

I swallow, listening to Bruce's first sentence, and then force it out of my mouth. "Jason, stop."

The guy stills, catching his knife as it falls and studying me. Or, I think he's studying me. That helmet makes him hard to read. At least he's not shocking me again; I'll take creepy stillness over getting shocked any day. So this guy is 'Jason,' huh? Not a name I recognize, no one I've heard Bruce mention, or Barbara. But it's somebody who knows Batman, who doesn't _like_ me being Batman. Kinda feels like the Joker all over again. I am really sick of being told that I'm not Batman. I have the _name_ don't I? I've been working in this suit for a while now, and I worked with the Justice League. Doesn't that give me at least a little bit of credit?

There's a moment of silence between us, and then 'Jason' shakes his head and gives a laugh that sounds bitter, almost hollow. The next second he's got that _thing_ pressed against my leg again, and I swear to god it's higher this time. I seize, teeth snapping together, and _scream_. The suit's vision reds out, slinging static across the screen as the circuits cut out, as it shuts down around me under the stress. Just for a minute, long enough for the excess electricity to bleed off and to guarantee it won't get damaged. The suit's designed to protect itself.

I think he pulls whatever it is away — the feeling from the outside of the suit is somewhat cut off — and slowly my vision comes back. My own breath sounds loud to me, ragged, and my pulse rushes in my ears. Too loud, too close.

"So somebody's listening," he comments, as I try and catch my breath. "Enjoying the soundtrack? How long are you going to sit there before you come after me, listener?" I pry my eyes open, moving and trying to draw into myself, away from him. He snaps forward, knife pressing tight against my throat before I can really react with more than a flinch backwards. "So who is it? Dick, Tim, Damian, or _Bruce?_ None of the girls would bother talking through someone like _you_ , they've got more pride than that."

I clench my teeth to snarl up at him, debating how fast I can punch him in the ribs and if I can do it before he slits my throat. Probably not, gonna try anyway. I twitch up, and Jason makes a _sharp_ sound and jerks the knife a little bit. I can hear it slice through the outer layer of the suit, feel the heat at my throat from the exposed circuitry. I don't move.

" _Try_ it, kid," he dares me, in a low growl. "I'll put this knife through your shoulder before you even _touch_ me." I glare at him, and he gives a rough laugh that sounds like it comes out of a grin. "I haven't stabbed a Bat in a while, but you're tempting me. Now how about you say something, listener? Or should I make the kid scream again first?"

"He can't," I spit, careful to not move my neck any higher against the blade. "Doesn't broadcast outside the suit."

" _Terry, ask him what he wants._ "

I swallow, hearing the knife bite a little deeper into the suit at my movement. "What do you want?" I ask, parroting Bruce, and he snorts and leans back on his heels. The knife stays against my throat, but the rest of him pulls away from being quite so in my face.

"Answers to my questions, like I said. Beyond that, it's mine to know and yours to find out." The thing in his other hand spits sparks from its two points at the press of a button, and I pull in a sharp breath. He lets it go, pulls the knife away from my throat, and straightens up to stand over me. "So who's talking to you, and where's the _real_ Batman?"

" _Tell him it's Tim,_ " Bruce says flatly, and I hesitate. _Tim_ , really? If this guy knows enough to know all the names, and a few _I_ haven't heard — who's Damian? And 'girls'? More than Barbara? — he's gotta know that Tim's never coming near a suit or any of this business anytime soon. No way this guy falls for that. " _ **Now**_ _, Terry!_ "

"It's Tim," I answer, bending my knees and getting my arms under me in case I have to move.

The guy stares down at me, and I really wish I could see his face underneath that helmet. Maybe I could actually predict some of what he's going to do. Maybe I could figure out who he _is_. He worries Bruce, almost scares him, and he's dangerously trained, deadly without a doubt. Plus there's that bat symbol on his chest — not so different from mine — and his obvious experience fighting against batarangs. Who _is_ this guy? How come Bruce calls him 'Jason,' and not whatever other name he must have? Guys in costumes, with weapons like these, don't go by their real names.

This time I actually see him start to move, and I blast my one boot in total reflex to get out of the way. It spins me on my back, and I almost knock his leg out from under him with the sweep of mine except then he's jumping over it. I roll and start to stand, and he's on me. The hilt of his knife smashes into my head, on the side of my jaw that already aches, and I turn with the impact. It stuns me for a second, but I call a batarang to my hand and fling it at him anyway.

I don't have the capacity for anything more than total _shock_ as his knife comes up to intercept it, catching the curve of one wing to hook it and using it's own momentum to fling it _back_ at me. Some part of me says I should try and dodge, but by the time reflexes kick in it's too late. I cry out as it sinks into my right shoulder, and that _hurts_ , recoiling and clutching at my arm with the other hand. Is _this_ what I've been doing to people? _Slag_.

"You know, it's interesting," he comments, and I snarl up at him, breathing through my mouth and trying to ignore the feeling of blood slipping down my arm, inside the suit. "I've got no problem believing that, but right now? From _you?_ You're a lying little shit, pretender, and I don't _like_ being lied to."

" _Terry, I'm sending the car to you. Get_ _ **out**_ _of there._ "

Yeah, that's _awesome_ advice. Get away from the crazy man with way too much training and insider knowledge. Just somehow, whatever, no tips or anything. _Great_.

I rip the batarang out of my arm, grinding my teeth down on another shout, and let it drop to the floor of the alley. Huh, _my_ blood. That's a first. "Get used to it," I manage. "I'm not telling you _anything_ , dreg." Maybe I'll actually get to make good on that too. If I can get into the car, there's no way he can follow me, right?

"We'll see," he says, and I can _hear_ the grin in his voice. "Wonder how long that voice in your ear is going to resist coming by to say hello? How many times do I have to make you _scream?_ "

And Bruce _will_. _Slag_ it. Bruce will come down here to find me, to save me, and this guy's going to kill him. He'll never have a chance. I'm _not_ being responsible for that. I grit my teeth — regretting it when the left side of my jaw and cheek send me twin bolts of sharp pain — and clench my hands for a second. "Sorry," I whisper, "don't come after me."

" _Terr—_ "

The click of me turning off the suit's comms feels louder than it is, but I manage a grin even past the fear burning in my chest. This guy's gonna kill me, but I did what I could to not lead him back to Bruce. I gave him time to get out, right? I did _something_ at least. The guy tilts his head and just looks at me, and I spread my legs and slip sideways, raising both arms in readiness.

"Guess he'll just have to not hear, huh?" I say, with _way_ more bravado than I actually feel. I can fake confidence, no problem. Been doing that a long time.

"Oh, kid, _bad_ idea."

I go on the offensive this time, diving at him, and he shoves the knife into its sheath and meets me head on. He takes a running step, slipping to the side of my punch and _leaping_ , his hand bracing against my shoulder and taking his full weight as he does a slagging _handstand flip_ over me, using me as a springboard. I grunt under the weight and force, turning to follow him with a backhanded blow, and he catches my arm and throws me through the air. I smack into the side of the dumpster, and he's there what feels like _instantly_ , that electrical device pressing against the center of my chest.

I scream again, pinned against the dumpster and bent backwards a little over the top of it. I'm pretty sure I black out for a second or two somewhere in the middle, because then the shock is gone and I'm falling to my knees in front of Jason. I feel his hands on either side of my skull, and then he pulls my head down and pain _explodes_ in the center of my face. I give an aborted cry of pain, and his hand is wrapped around my throat, dragging me up and slamming me back against the dumpster. I hang in his grip, and I can't _think_ past the pain in my bones, my face, my shoulder. It's too much, I _can't_.

"You're lucky I don't need you, kid," he snarls, and is he really as close as he sounds? He sounds like he's hissing it right in my ear. "But not _that_ lucky."

Something hits the side of my head, and I—

* * *

The kid collapses to the ground, out cold. I tuck my taser away, and crack my knuckles. Huh. Interesting.

Yeah, the kid — 'Batman' my ass — is a little bastard, but he's got spirit at least. Not many people brave enough to cut off the only chance of rescue they have. Not that it'll do him any good. It's definitely not going to stop me from finding whoever he's got in his ear. Still, give the kid points for trying.

So it's not Tim. Weird, because Tim feels like the _first_ person I'd believe would build a suit as advanced as this kid's, and send someone out fighting in it. Bruce runs a close second, but someone as green behind the ears as this? No, no way. This kid's not just _new_ , he's barely _trained_. Bruce may be an asshole, and he might put kids in the field that are too young — son of a _bitch_ — but we get trained first. He makes _sure_ we've got a fighting chance, even if it's slim, and he makes sure we get better as time goes on.

This kid is _not trained_. He's got some basic ideas of how to throw a punch, and how to move, but it's not enough to even be a Robin. It's _obvious_ that he's relying on that suit and the advantages it gives him. I watched him take out that gang, and the suit definitely at least increases his strength by a _lot_ , along with the tricks it's got up its sleeve.

Collapsible batarangs; didn't see that coming.

Dick would be out here himself, and so would any of the girls. Even _Damian_ would never hide behind someone else; the kid would be a Robin for him, not a Batman.

So maybe it's not a Bat at all. Maybe it's someone who found the tech, or something like that. That might at least be why he's this untrained. Makes me feel a bit better to think that this is just some random kid, and his friend, who found some leftover Bat tech and made use of it. This definitely does feel like a future, not just some messed up fever dream, but if this _is_ the future — or, _a_ future, Ducra would _kill_ me for assuming there was just one — then where are all the Bats? What year is it, and what happened to all of us in between this year and mine?

Bruce probably died — all of us always knew that'd happen someday — but the rest of us? Gotham needs a Batman, we all know that. Dick took over last time, but we'd all do it if we had to. I'd do it, if there was no one else left. I'd hate every second of it at first, but I'd do it.

Well, whoever it is — Bat or not — there's an obvious place to start looking.

If this is really Gotham — and from everything I saw on my way down here, it is — then Wayne Manor has to be here somewhere. When you want to find a Bat, head by the cave, right? Things can't have changed enough that that's not true anymore, even if all the Bats are dead this new kid would get a great home base out of the manor.

If things have _really_ changed, it might not be there. But it's a good place to start.

I nudge the collapsed kid with my foot, and huff out a breath. I suppose I should take him with me. I'm not quite enough of a bastard to just leave him unconscious in an alley; could get him killed. His total lack of training aside, the kid probably doesn't deserve to get murdered when he's out cold. Besides, I might need him if the manor turns out to be a bust.

So I'll need to steal another car, shove the kid in the back seat, and head out for the manor. The cars actually aren't all that different from driving an automatic, with the up or down on stick shift controls. I crashed mine for the attention, not because I couldn't fly it. There are also definitely bikes — saw some of those on my way down here — but while those would be easier for me to drive, they won't be as easy to carry the kid on. So, car it is.

There's a whir of electronics, systems, and I look up as — absolutely no doubt — the Batmobile pulls into the air above us and stops. The bottom opens up with a circular hole, and I stare up at it. It's a little sharper, a little sleeker, and it's got hints of red in the design now, but it's definitely the Batmobile.

 _Very_ tempting, but no way.

"Nice try," I mutter, leaning down to pick up the kid and hoist him over my shoulder. He doesn't weigh all that much.

I wonder if the kid called it, or if whoever is in his ear sent it for him. The kid was definitely trying to get away from me more than he was trying to fight me, and there'd be no way I could catch him if he made it into that thing. Well, almost no way. I'm sure I could have improvised something, or at least flung a tracker on him and gone from there.

Fun as the idea of flying a future version of the Batmobile sounds, I'm really sure I can't. Even in my time, the jet had all kinds of security measures to keep anyone not authorized from flying it. I'm sure those have only gotten better with time, and there's no way I count as one of the people allowed to fly that thing.

Well, there's a small chance, but not enough to risk it. Besides, the kid might have shut down his communication with the voice in his ear, but I'd bet the jet has its own communication, and almost definitely a video link too. I'll skip getting nailed or caught in a jet I can't fly, thanks. I've done a lot of crazy things in the name of fun, but falling to some wannabe Batman because I was stupid enough to get inside his flying car? I'm not _that_ crazy, and I've got better common sense than that most of the time.

It's not like a car will be hard to steal, anyway. The first one was easy enough, and now that I'm not looking for attention I should be able to do it under the radar. Assuming that the cops are as easy to lose as they were the last time, and I don't doubt that at all. I've had a bit of practice dodging cops, and generally they don't just get better at hunting people down for no apparent reason. They were easy to lose before, so they'll be easy to lose again.

I'll find whoever sent this kid out on the streets, and find out what the _hell_ they think they're doing sending an untrained kid like this out to fight. _Batman_ my ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Like I said, Jason's got his reasons for being a bastard. No family loyalty for someone you've never met and don't consider worthy of the symbol they're wearing. Also worth noting, Jason is overly critical of Terry's abilities. Terry _can_ fight, even decently well, he's just not Jason's match and Jason takes extra offense to him calling himself 'Batman.' He's not up to Jason's standards of what even a Robin should be trained in. Anyone making faces, do you _really_ want to put a 'one unspecified martial arts master' and old!Bruce, hands-off trained Terry, up against at-his-prime!Bruce, Lady Shiva, Talia al Ghul, and All-Caste trained Jason and tell me Jason doesn't _kick his ass_ _?_
> 
> Because if you do I call bullshit.
> 
> Anyway, I'll post the next chapter up next weekend, when I've got a bit more of a brain. Featuring Bruce-Jason sniping, some tiny hints of my version of the BB universe's background, and lots of Jason refusing to call Terry by his name. See you later!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! So, firstly, those of you who follow my Tumblr will know this, but this last Monday (the 9th, March) I found out that my Dad died. This prompted a sudden trip to deal with his belongings and apartment, and close everything that's in his name. So, if you've reviewed, commented, or sent me condolences/a PM, I will be responding to you. It's been a hell of a week, and I haven't had the time to do that yet.
> 
> Now, moving on to the story, this is the second chapter! Please note, I have _taken liberties_ with Jason's role in the BB universe. I am aware that Jason was never a Robin in the BB universe, and lived some other totally unconnected life, but for the purposes of this story I'm retconning that. I've done my best to tie it into the background of the BB universe, and it shouldn't disrupt any facts we know. If you happen to know tidbits, I'm happy to hear them, but please don't inform me that 'this isn't what happened' because yes, I know that. But the interaction between Bruce and a Jason he knows is much more interesting than a Bruce who doesn't know who Jason is. Go with it; I have thought this through.
> 
> So, **warnings** for the chapter are: Bruce and Jason being verbally mean to each other, verging on cruel, and mentions of canon character death (Jason, who else?).

Pulling up to the cave's entrance, a mile or so outside of Wayne Manor — just where I remember it being, and you can see the manor from a long ways away through the trees if you know what you're looking for — feels pretty nostalgic. Apart from the fact that I'm in a flying car, and I've got an unconscious, beaten Batman wannabe in the back seat — though actually, that part's not so different — this could be any other time coming in from a patrol back when I was Robin. Of course I wouldn't have been driving — Bruce was a stickler about the _weirdest_ shit — but it doesn't really matter what side of the car you're on.

Same feeling whether you're Batman, Robin, or something else altogether. Usually I fell into that 'something else' category.

It's been awhile since I've been near the cave, but that feeling never really goes away. Plus, who _knows_ how long it's been since I've been back here, in whatever future this might be. I'm definitely thinking future now, not just some weird drug trip or magical prison or something. This'd be way too much trouble to go through for that, and a pretty insane thing for me to dream up in my own head.

Of course, that leaves the question of _why_ I've been randomly shifted through time to some point — really need to find a newspaper or something with a date on it — in the future. Was it purposeful, accidental, or just one of those random weird things the universe does? Those I'm at least familiar with; I still don't know exactly what it was that brought me back to life.

Well, one question at a time.

Let's start with who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put this untrained kid out on the streets with such a huge bullseye like the name 'Batman' on his shoulders. Have this future's villains just gotten kinda pathetic and far less dangerous, or what? Because one thing I know for sure? My Gotham's villains would tear this kid _apart_. He'd be dead within a week, even with his fancy suit. Seems like it's not too much good against 'old-fashioned' bullets, and it definitely didn't do much against my knife. Granted, not much can stand up against my knife.

"Alright," I comment to myself, steering the flying car into the tunnel, "let's see who's home."

There's no security, which surprises me. At least, none that activates. Wonder if that's because whoever's inside is shutting it down, or if we've upgraded to the point where the suit and the security systems communicate. Maybe so long as it can read the suit, the security doesn't activate? That seems like a security _flaw_ , which is something none of us Bats would stand for, but I guess it's possible. It's not like I've got much of an idea where technology has gotten to in whatever year this is.

The cave is… just like I remember it. Giant dinosaur, coin, and glass cases included. Bruce really never changes things, I guess.

I park the car, flick the power off, and push open the door. No one immediately greets me, tries to shoot me, or anything else similar, so I climb out, shut the door, and open the one to the back seats to grab the wannabe Batman kid. I drag him over my shoulder and shut his door again. He makes a noise at the jostling, but I'm pretty well acquainted with the noises people make when they're hurt or unconscious, and this one isn't one that threatens any kind of immediate awareness. He'll probably still be out for quite awhile.

I draw my knife into my free hand more out of habit than any real sense of impending threat, and head away from the garage section of the cave, out into the main area in front of the computer. On, and blinking something vaguely like a screensaver, but clearly in use at least pretty recently. I'd bet at least right up until I knocked the kid out and left the Batmobile hovering in that alley, waiting for him. Thank god that thing didn't follow us, by the way. If that thing followed the suit, waiting for the kid to jump in and take off in it, I don't even know what I would have done. Talk about killing any kind of stealth. I got trained by some of the best ninjas and assassins in the world, and I still don't know if I could have successfully flown under the radar with that thing hovering over me.

"So who's home?!" I shout into the cave, standing in front of the computer. I unceremoniously kick the chair in front of it around, and dump the kid into the empty seat. He makes another noise, but doesn't move or show any other signs of waking up. "Come on! Computer's on, so you've gotta be here!"

True, checking out Wayne manor was a, 'might as well check the obvious places first,' and a, 'just in case,' more than anything else, but not even Bruce's computer would stay on a screensaver that long. It's got all kinds of power-saving programming, some of which I know shuts the computer down if nothing activates it in a while. I don't know exactly what the cutoff is, but I know it should have shut down by now.

Besides, the computer is pretty free of dust, so someone's gotta be using it on a pretty regular basis. So, whoever the voice in the kid's ear is, they're here.

It's someone who knows my name, too. Sure, maybe I'm hidden in those files somewhere, but the kid didn't have a clue who I was — I'm pretty sure he still doesn't — so the person in his ear must have told him to say my name. There are only so many people who know my name, even if the list is more than it really should be. That part's not my fault, really, even if I stopped religiously hiding my name once the Joker got through with me. Ra's and Talia already knew it, so keeping it secret from the rest of the hero community was a lost cause, and I'm legally dead anyway so what the fuck did it matter?

The pad of footsteps is pretty much silent, but not to people with senses like mine. I turn towards the faint sound, to a figure at the foot of a long flight of stairs that must lead up to the manor. The lights are dim — they've always been dim down here when there isn't something specific to brighten up — but it's enough for me to see, and enough for me to recognize the person watching me, a cane in his left hand. Older, yeah, but those blue eyes are impossible to mistake for anyone else's, and the bone structure is the same.

"Bruce," I say, quietly. I shove my knife away, back into its sheath, and take a step back from the kid's sprawled, unconscious form.

"Jason." His voice is still that same growl, the one from behind the cowl that we all knew better than the one he used as a Wayne. Right now it's cold, threatening, and just generally not pleased to see me. Alright, fair enough.

Bruce and I aren't exactly on the best of terms even in my time, I guess I didn't really need the proof that our relationship was never going to get any better. False hope; I should know better than to think that Bruce would ever accept me being who I am, or me actually bowing to his stupid rules. Not gonna happen, either way. We're both way too stubborn for that.

"So you were the one in the kid's ear?" I ask, totally rhetorically. I shake my head and bark out a laugh, glancing over at the kid's body. That… That kinda stings. Bruce is still alive, so it can't be _that_ far in the future, and he's actually sending someone this _green_ out into the field? What the hell happened to the six months of intensive training, to _never_ getting put out in harm's way unless you could prove you were at the top of your game? A fancy suit is _not_ a substitute for training.

"Will he wake up?" Bruce is definitely accusing me, and alright it's totally justified — I was definitely _thinking_ about stabbing the kid, when he was being an unhelpful little bastard — but it still hurts a little that he thinks I'd actually permanently take the kid down like that. I guess… I guess I can't judge, I don't know what might have happened in the years between us.

"He'll be fine," I answer, with only a little snap to my voice. "Some bruises, broken nose, and a few stitches for his shoulder and his ankle. Shouldn't even leave a scar." Bruce doesn't move, and I consider him. He looks… wary. Understandable, I suppose, but shouldn't he be moving, helping, doing _something?_ Or, does he think I'm going to try killing him if he gets any closer?

"Why bring him back here?" he growls at me, glancing over at the parked car sitting on his landing pad. "You could have left him in that alley, wouldn't that have been enough to kill him?"

"Woah, _what?_ " I take another step back from the kid, sideways and no closer to Bruce. "Alright, clearly some wires got crossed here. My fault, probably, and I guess it's all evidence to the contrary, but I'm just here to talk. I wouldn't kill the kid."

 _Kill_ the kid? No, no way. Hurt him, sure. Teach him a lesson about fighting crime when he's not prepared for it, definitely. But _kill_ him?

Bruce's eyes narrow, sharply, hand tightening on his cane. "I've heard that from you before, Jason. Why don't you take off the helmet and say it again?"

"So you can gas me? No thanks." The response is totally automatic, and when it hits me exactly what I'm saying I wince and almost raise a hand to press over my eyes before I remember the helmet. "Wow, we're both just a couple of bitter, paranoid fucks aren't we? Alright, alright."

I reach up, hesitating just a second, and then disconnect the helmet. The faint hiss of air in my ears from the ventilation system sounds loud, and not gonna lie, the second where I'm pulling the helmet off my head and I can't see Bruce is one of the scarier moments of the night. I bend, laying it on the floor to one side of my feet, and straighten back up. I hesitate another second before raising my hand again and curling fingers around the edge of my domino mask, prying it off. It stings a bit to take off, like tape, but it's not so bad. I drag in a deep breath as it comes off, and drop it to the side, on top of my helmet.

"Satisfied?" I ask. "Just here to talk, promise. Appreciate if you didn't gas me before I get a chance to explain."

Bruce watches me for several moments, then lifts the cane to point at the kid. "Do you mind?"

I shake my head. "Go ahead." He doesn't move, and I bite back a sigh that tightens my jaw. "How far back do you want me, old man? It's not like I'm going to stab you in the back; I've got a little more pride than stabbing an old man like you when he's not armed and facing me."

Bruce starts forward, and the look in his eyes is… _Christ_ , I don't think he's _ever_ looked at me with that much… hatred. That much _disgust_. "No, you _don't_."

I flinch back, taking in a sharp breath through my teeth. _Ouch_. "Whatever I did to you—"

"Whatever you _did?_ " Bruce flat out hisses at me, stopping next to the kid's sprawled form and turning on me. " _No_ , Jason. I tried for _years_ to help you, and you threw me out at _every_ turn. I can forgive what you did to _me_ , but Tim, Barbara, _Dick?_ I don't care _how_ you've somehow crawled your way back out of a grave for the second time; you're not welcome here anymore. Get out."

I try and catch my breath as he turns half away from me, reaching forward with his free hand to tilt the kid's head up, look at the slice under his throat and across his chest. I swallow down the feeling of a phantom knife in my gut, closing my eyes for a second and resisting the urge to pretty much just fold over onto the ground. Bruce has been mean before, we've spat insults, raged, and wrapped hands around each other's throats, but this is different. Oh I've _hated_ him before, some part of me definitely still does, but I was pretty sure he never really hated me.

What I became, sure, and definitely how I used what he taught me. But me? I don't think I was ever anything but a mistake he wanted to fix, and I don't think he hated me for it. Not like this.

I grit my teeth and watch Bruce's back, his hands as they slip across the kid's suit and catalogue injuries. "So now's probably a good time to mention that I'm pretty sure I got thrown out of my time, and I don't know what you're talking about."

Bruce's glance is flatly disbelieving, and he fishes what looks a bit like a gun out of his jacket. If it were anyone but Bruce I'd be concerned about getting shot, but there's no way he'd ever fall that far. That's part of the whole problem, isn't it? He reaches in and tugs the suit down at the throat — it crackles, and the exposed bits of circuitry spark a little — exposing a slice of pretty pale skin. The gun-like thing gets pressed up against the kid's neck, and Bruce pulls the trigger set in the bottom. There's a hiss, and after a second he pulls it back and tucks it away again.

I resist asking what he's doing. It's not like he'd tell me jack shit anyway; not this Bruce. I get my answer after about a second and a half anyway. The kid jerks and gasps, arching in the chair and grabbing onto the arms of it hard enough to bend the metal with an awful and way too familiar screeching of metal.

"Terry!" Bruce barks sharply, pressing his free hand to the kid's closer shoulder, the uninjured one.

The kid's breathing hard, fast — I'd bet that was a shot of adrenaline, or something similar — but he responds to Bruce, loosening his grip and easing down from the arch, head snapping sideways. Well, whaddya know? So the kid's got the same ingrained obedience as a Robin, even if he is pretending to be Batman. Guess even if you get dropped in the field with the big title, you still get treated like a sidekick. Must bite; the kid seemed a little too headstrong for a sidekick role, too willing to disobey orders.

"Bruce?" he gasps out, and then his head twists to scan the rest of the room, and his gaze fixes on me. " _You_ ," he snarls, starting to push up. He drops again with a sharp sound of pain, left hand coming up to cradle the side of his head.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" I comment. "Terry, huh?" Bruce shoots me a nasty look, and I shunt it to one side and absorb it, repressing the urge to swallow. I know how to weather his nasty looks, I've been doing it a long time.

I just let myself get angry.

Bruce hooks his fingers underneath the edge of the kid's suit, at his neck, and pulls it upwards. I can see Terry's hands clench, see the tension of pain in his muscles, but he lets the old man pull the hood off him and set it aside. It folds like fabric, which is impressive. After testing the suit's armor — with that kick to his side — I didn't hold back; I hit him hard enough to kill someone in a barehanded fight. None of it really took him down, so the fact that the suit is that thin, and folds that easily, is a pretty decent leap of technology. It's _still_ not a substitute for training, but maybe I get a _little_ bit of why it might have been allowed. Maybe he's still teaching the kid, or something.

I look back at the kid, clench my teeth at the sight of his face, but force it into a grin that I'm not naive enough to think isn't bitter. I'm a decent actor, most of the time, but not around Bruce. Not ever around him.

"Isn't he a little old for you, Bruce?" I mock, and the kid's eyes open to glare at me.

Underneath the bruising that's concentrated on the left side of his jaw, and up along his hairline, cheek, and temple on that side — kid's lucky that he can still open that eye, far as I'm concerned — he's a teenager. Seventeen or eighteen I'd say, twenty at the absolute maximum but I'm not willing to stretch my estimate of Bruce's sudden morals about age that far. And of course, black hair and blue eyes. What else would one of us have? Wonder if this is another of his 'real' sons, like Damian, or just another one of us freaks that he adopted from wherever.

"What the hell do you know?" the kid snarls at me, and I can't help laughing.

"Terry, _no_ ," Bruce intercedes, and I'm pretty sure the grin I shoot at him is pretty much just a baring of my teeth.

"Oh come _on_ , Bruce. You want to tell him, or should I?" Bruce doesn't answer, even if he's back to giving me that look like he's wishing I'd drop dead on the spot. A large portion of me is off in a corner of my chest, shaking in pain, but the stronger part, the part that knows how to _cope_ , is showing off its teeth and brushing the dust off my old walls. I can _handle_ it; I did before.

The kid looks from me to Bruce, as we stare at each other, and then I can see something in his eyes that is really, _really_ familiar. He's _pissed_. He shoves off the chair, away from Bruce's hand, and he wobbles a little but stays standing, bracing on the other side of the chair.

"Don't you _do_ this to me, Bruce," he snaps, eyes wild and dilated with adrenaline, but focused. "Don't you _dare_ keep information like this from me _now_. Tell me the _truth_. Who the hell is _he?_ "

"It doesn't matter," Bruce answers flatly, holding my gaze, but I can see the emotional pain and flash of _furious_ betrayal on the kid's face. Oh, _button press_ there. Clearly the current dynamic duo isn't that much of a partnership at the moment. "Go—"

"Robin," I snap, cutting off whatever order Bruce was going to spit. Terry looks at me, angry but curious, and I offer him a tight grin. "I was Robin, kid. One of them, anyway." He goes from angry to confused, and I watch his gaze flick sideways, to the glass cases with the suits in them that are to the right of the computer. "I'm not in there." Noticed that when I first came in, but there were a few more important things to do than wonder where my suit had gone. Now I guess I know. "You took it down," I aim at Bruce, and his hand tightens on the cane.

"Of _course_ I did. After what you'd done—"

"Which I haven't done _yet_ ," I snarl, feeling my hands clenching. Bad, don't tense unless you're moving to attack. Always be loose, be easy. Never let anger rule your physical being, never let it influence how you can move. "Haven't you been _listening?_ "

"What are you talking about?" Terry asks, as I force my hands to loosen, the muscles in my shoulders to ease out.

"As far as I can tell I've been yanked through time," I spit, at Bruce's disbelieving, guarded face and Terry's confused, curious, bruised one. "And I don't _like_ you Bruce but last I knew in _my_ time we were at least in a truce. I _don't know what you think I did_ , and I guess it was a _stupid_ fucking question because you _never_ listen. I came here for _answers_ , to get back to my own time, not for you to hate me for something I haven't even done."

Bruce's face is a shield, completely shutting me off, and his voice is low and unyielding. "It's better that you're stuck here."

I shove out a breath that's half a laugh, resisting the urge to draw my knife, or a gun, or anything else I can use to _hurt_ Bruce. I've done a lot of awful shit, and I'm not proud of most of it, but the two of us were alright. Not great, but we tolerated each other, and he vouched for me for the Justice League. We haven't been at each other's throats in a while, not anywhere near like this, anyway. I can't _believe_ that any version of Bruce would actually trap me in a time that isn't mine, just to try preventing whatever happened. That violates all _kinds_ of time travel rules and he _knows_ that.

"You're unbelievable," I hiss. "You know, I've seen you do some really stupid shit for selfish reasons, but _this?_ This is _time_. You don't fuck with time! You should know that."

"Get out," he growls, and I grind my teeth together, leaning down to grab my mask and helmet off the floor.

"Fuck you too, Bruce," I snarl, pressing the mask back on over my eyes and the bridge of my nose with a lot less care than I probably should. "I'll find my own way back, and I'm going to do _exactly_ whatever it is you're so damn scared of. You can go to hell."

* * *

Jason turns away, and I take a glance between the angry set of his shoulders and Bruce's 'I'm a thousand years old and will not change my ways' face, as it dawns on me that they're seriously going to just leave it right here. No _way_ I'm letting this just go on by. This is a _Robin_ , a real one who isn't middleaged and totally out of the hero business. One I didn't know about, and alright there's definitely a part of me that wants to keep Jason around just because Bruce doesn't want him here. Even if he did wreck me. I can deal with hanging around someone who beat me up to get just a little bit of a vindictive kick out of antagonizing Bruce.

"Wait," I call, taking half a step away from the computer console and then folding back against it as pain and dizziness swamp me in turns. Oh man, I don't even want to _know_ what my face looks like considering what it feels like right now. "Hang on, can we talk about this?"

"There's nothing to talk about, Terry," Bruce says sharply, and I can see Jason stop in his tracks, only a few steps towards the car, and go completely rigid for a second before he whirls around.

" _No_ , you know what? Before I go, what the fuck is _that_ , Bruce?" His arm snaps out, pointing at me, and I flinch back just a bit. The gesture feels like an attack, and sets off all the instinctive bits of me that have learned to get the hell out of the way of things pointed in my general direction. " _Batman?_ The kid doesn't have the skillset of a fucking _Robin_ and you put a giant blinking target on his shoulders. I don't expect you to ever learn your fucking lesson about putting kids in the field, but not even _training_ them? Are you _asking_ for another casualty, Bruce, or are you just delusional?"

"I know how to fight," I argue, and he shoots me a dismissive sneer.

"Don't get involved in things you don't know shit about, kid."

"I'm not a _kid_ ," I snarl, shoving off the console and forcing myself to stay up, even as my vision swims a bit and it feels like Jason's knife is driving into the side of my skull, "and I _know_ how to fight."

He turns fully towards me, and his hand snaps out. I see the metal, but before I can do more than flinch aside the batarang-like thing is embedded in the console next to my elbow, and there's a new rip in the side of my suit, on my upper arm. I suck in a sharp breath, and Jason scoffs, shaking his head. He straightens up as I breathe, starting to ease down from the sudden tension and the adrenaline in my veins.

"No, kid, you _don't_ know how to fight. You're in an advanced tech suit that enhances your strength, speed, and reaction time, with a dozen nasty tricks or more and a built in computer." He flashes a grin that's way closer to a baring of teeth, taking a step forward and raising a hand to his chest. " _I'm_ a human with a knife, a gun, and a taser. By _every_ right you should have beaten me into the ground, but I kicked your ass. Worse, there wasn't a _second_ where you were even a challenge to me." I clench my hands on the edge of the computer, and he gives a vicious bark of laughter. "Calling you Batman is a _joke_ , kid. Calling you _Robin_ would be an insult to the name."

I recoil, automatically stepping back and away from the disgusted sneer, and flinching when my thigh hits the console. _Slag_ , I… That _hurts_. I've done good in this suit, I've worked _hard_ , and here's some guy spitting my flaws back at me. No, not 'some guy.' A Robin, and he's flat out telling me that he wouldn't even call me a _sidekick_ , let alone a real hero. That just makes it _worse_.

"Jason," Bruce says, with a warning note, "that's _enough_."

"Don't you _dare_ use that fucking tone with me, Bruce," Jason snarls back. "I'm not your sidekick anymore, not even in my time, and you don't _get_ to tell me what's _enough_. The kid might not know any better, but _you_ should. When he dies, and he _will_ , it'll be _your_ fault for throwing him out there, just because you can't stand the damn thought that there's no 'Batman' on the streets." He gives another one of those barks of laughter, and a sharp grin. "Haven't you got _enough_ of our blood on your hands already, old man? Could you just not wait to add some more? Couldn't live with the fact that you only got _one_ of us killed, you had to try for a second, huh?"

" _Stop_ , Jason. _Now_."

" _Fuck_ you," he hisses, mouth twisted in something between a sneer and a grin, but just filled with _anger_. "You don't _ever_ deserve to forget me, Bruce, and obviously you have. You deserve to wake up every fucking night remembering the _death_ on your hands, and that you didn't have the fucking _decency_ to even remember the lesson for more than a few months." He laughs, with a bitter, broken edge that cuts across the air like it's made of knives. All I can do is stare, and wonder what the hell _happened_ to set the two of them at odds like this. Sure, Tim and Barbara are bitter, and they don't approve, but they're not _murderous_ like Jason is. What _happened?_ "Every _god_ damn time I come back you've got another underage kid on the streets, fighting _your_ war and paying for it. Kids shouldn't _ever_ be involved in our line of work, Bruce, and you damn well know it. Christ, how do you even _sleep_ at night knowing what a hypocritical, arrogant, _bastard_ you are?"

"Enough!" Bruce shouts, and I jerk back, snapping my head to the side. Holy—

Jason only gives a sharp grin. "Truth _hurts_ , doesn't it, Bruce? How about you try telling me that your new kid is even _half_ as well trained as he should be? How good a _liar_ are you? _Try_."

Bruce's jaw is tight, his hand white knuckled around his cane, and slowly, through his teeth, he growls, " _Get out_."

"Yeah, _thought_ so." The grin fades away, and he matches Bruce's lower voice, his _snarl_. "Now how about you tell me you didn't _know_ that?" I look over at Bruce when there's no immediate answer, and something sinks in my chest when he doesn't answer at all, mouth closed. Jason snorts and shakes his head, sneering. "I hope you choke on your self righteous hypocrisy, Bruce. _Enjoy_ it."

He turns on his heel, raising his helmet and tugging it on as he heads for the car. I stare, watching Jason head across the cave floor and throw open the door of his stolen car, climbing inside. It slams shut, and the car whirs to life, spins in place, and shoots out of the cave at a speed that's _seriously_ dangerous for a car that isn't the Batmobile. The lingering sound of the engine dies out, and I sit back against the console, feeling like a puppet with cut strings. I've faced a lot of scary people, but nobody's made me feel really _threatened_ like that since the Joker came back. Is that some kind of thing about people from Bruce's day? Are they just nastier in general?

"Bruce," I start, and he abruptly turns away from me and stalks towards the stairs. "Hey, wai—"

"Go home, Terry," he growls over his shoulder. "Leave the suit."

"Hang on a second," I call, "you can't just _leave_. What was that? What happened with Jason? What's going _on_ , Bruce?" The door to the manor shuts behind him, and I shove out a huff of breath and raise a hand to my head, combing back through my hair. "You've gotta be _kidding_ me!" I shout after him. "You can't just ignore me when you don't want to talk!" Except he can, and he has, and he will.

Slag this. _Fine_. I'll just put up with being kept in the dark about seriously important things that might get me _killed_ , because _hey_ , it's not like he actually cares if I live or not. Apparently I'm seriously under trained, and he's known it the whole time. He just sent me out anyway because who cares if some random kid gets killed? I'm not important. I'm _replaceable_. So I'll just strip off the suit, go home, and he can brood alone in the dark until he feels like telling me the _important_ stuff. _Slag_ him.

The circuits that Jason laid open hiss and spark under my hands, and I carefully keep them away from my skin as I pull the suit off. One catches me, briefly, and seriously stings, but it's not any worse than an accidental shock from someone else. Considering I got _electrocuted_ a few times earlier tonight by Jason, I think I can handle a minor shock. I throw the suit over the chair, and glare at it as I collect my jacket and shoes from around the corner of the console, where I leave them when I jump into the suit at the start of a night. After all, it's going to be a long walk home. I might get there by dawn, if I'm lucky.

I head up the stairs, and of course the manor is dead silent and empty when I head through it. Of _course_ Bruce is off in some corner of it, _avoiding_ me like he always does when I've got questions of any kind that he doesn't want to answer. So, you know, _all_ of them. I swear I'd never get any kind of explanation for anything at all if I didn't press him so hard for it. As it is I get more information out of Barbara, and she barely even tolerates me most days. Sometimes I—

I just need a break right now, that's all.

I might slam the manor door harder than is necessary, but it _sticks_ sometimes, alright? I head down the path, expecting Ace to come bounding up at any moment but he never does. Guess the traitor's off with Bruce, busy avoiding me. I regret clenching my teeth almost as fast as I do it, and I close my eyes and stop for a second to try and swallow down the rush of nausea and dizziness. It's not hard, just leaves me breathing through my teeth for the rest of the walk down to the gate. It clangs shut behind me, and I bite back a sigh as I start down the road.

Awesome. I'm nauseous, and I'm dizzy, and my face probably looks like I got the bad end of a run in with Jokerz, and I've got _miles_ to walk before I can even start to get a hope of catching any kind of public transportation. Why does Wayne manor have to be so far away from _every other living being?_ Oh, yeah, because Bruce is an arrogant recluse who used to run around dressed as a bat in his spare time. Like I do except with all the money in the world. _That_ must have made things easier.

I really wish there was _anything_ out here besides the road. At least having something to look at besides trees and asphalt might keep my mind occupied, and not spinning around in circles over the fact that when it comes down to it Bruce doesn't trust me. Either what happened with Jason was something he's seriously ashamed of — like, the dark secret of his life level — or he just doesn't trust me enough to tell me about it. Maybe a bit of both columns. Still, you'd _think_ that nearly getting killed by someone would earn me the right to get told who the hell they are.

Instead all I get to know is that Jason was a Robin, is dangerous, and apparently did something bad enough that Bruce totally wiped his existence from the cave and out of the records. Something that made the two of them enemies, not just the distant and bitter strangers that Bruce is with the rest of the Bats.

Thanks, that's _great_. I think I could have figured out that Jason is dangerous all on my own. I kinda noticed.

I raise my head at a whooping laugh that I recognize with a sinking heart, and then duck off the side of the road automatically. I slow down a bit, and creep through the woods towards the laughing. That can't be anything but Jokerz, so what unlucky bastard caught their attention tonight? It's only a minute or so away from the main road, they might have chased someone up here. I _hope_ they just chased someone up here, and they're not camping the road out and _waiting_ for me. Wouldn't surprise me if they were though.

There's a car pulled to the side of the road, the car _Jason_ was driving, and it's circled by the Jokerz' bikes, loosely ringing it in. Half of them — it's a big group, seventeen at a first count — are still straddling the bikes, while the others are in a loose semicircle around the far side of the car. I don't recognize any of them, but there's an obvious ringleader standing in front of a man leaning casually against the side of the car. Jason. Oh _slag_. I haven't got the suit, or any gear, and I'm definitely not in any kind of a condition to be taking down seventeen Jokerz barehanded. I might not even have the concentration to be a decent distraction and lead them away from him.

I sneak closer, staying in the cover of the trees, and finally ending up on the other side of the car, hidden but within earshot.

"You're not _laughing_ , man," the ringleader says, somewhere between frustrated and mocking, and I carefully flatten my back against a tree and lean around it to get a look at what's going on.

Jason's helmet is off, I think his mask is too, his jacket is zipped up over the armor and bat symbol, and he seems utterly unthreatened by the Joker in his face or the ring boxing him against the car. His arms are crossed, head tilted a bit to one side as he considers the clown in front of him. This one is in a long purple coat, with orange hair and a bright red grin that shows too many teeth.

"I don't find you funny," Jason responds, in a drawl, and I wince. Oh, he's got no idea how to deal with Jokerz. Telling them they're not funny is just about the most surefire way to piss them off that there is. There's _seventeen_ of them.

"Not funny, huh?" the ringleader says in a laugh, and flicks open a blade in his right hand. "Oh, you're gonna laugh. We're _hilarious_." I tense, ready to jump in even though we're way outnumbered and I don't have anything but my bare hands to fight with.

Jason straightens up sharply, and moves into the ringleader's space as he steps forward. "Alright, listen up you _clowns_." I pause, watching as the ringleader Joker steps back, looking kind of uncertain, under Jason's forward movement. "I _knew_ the original Joker, we've got some personal history, and you're all sad, _pathetic_ imitations of him. If you turn around, get on your bikes and go, _now_ , I won't chase you down." He offers a sharp grin, and I can see the shift in his stance as he loosens out. "I'm not a civilian, I'm damn well not a hero, and I'm in a _bad_ mood. I'd _love_ to take that mood out on you. Do you _really_ want me to?"

For a second, I actually think he's managed to intimidate the Jokerz into leaving him alone. The ringleader steps away, dropping the knife down by his leg, and there's a shifting, murmuring wave in the rest of them that has a general backwards feel. But then their crowd thing kicks in — the more Jokerz you get in a group, the more stupidly brave they get — and suddenly they're coming at him. I spit a curse, starting to move, and then end up standing and staring in a mixture of awe and shock.

Jason moves like _water_ , flowing and spinning around and between the Jokerz, but his takedowns are sharp and brutal. Rigid fingers to a throat, a boot to the side of a knee, the reversal of a Joker's blade into his own shoulder… All of it without breaking that rhythm, without anything that even _looks_ like effort. Eight go down in rapid succession, a mix of the ones on bike and the ones on foot, before the rest of the Jokerz realize that they might be outmatched, and another two before they start actually reacting. The first to flee Jason flings one of his not-quite-a-batarangs at, and it sinks deep into the man's back and sends him crashing and skidding along the asphalt.

"We're not _done_ ," Jason snarls, over the top of hysterical sounds of pain from the Jokerz unlucky enough to just be hurt, and not unconscious.

The second tries to drive a bike past him, and he throws his shoulder forward and armbars the girl right off the vehicle. It wipes out another on foot Joker as it skids out of control, and the woman Jason hit slams hard into the pavement and doesn't get back up. There's no one immediately near him after that, and I watch with wide eyes as he grabs the gun from its holster on his thigh, and takes three shots in the span of about two seconds that take down three separate Jokerz. No kill shots, as far as I can see. The last Joker collapses to his knees, clasping his hands and blubbering some kind of unintelligible plea as Jason approaches him, picking his way around unconscious and not as lucky Jokerz. He tucks the gun away, and comes to a stop in front of the last one.

" _Please_ ," the clown gasps, "please, _no_."

Jason tilts his head, considering, and then he takes half a step away and snaps a kick into the side of the Joker's head. He collapses to the side, out cold, and Jason turns away and starts back towards his car.

"You want a ride, kid?" he asks flatly, looking up and finding me without a problem, and I start a little bit. "You look like a murder suspect with those bruises and the blood on your arm."

"Blood?" I echo, and look down to find out that yeah, when I pull the jacket back a bit I've got a decent trail of dried blood down my right arm. Right, _slag_. That's fun. I grimace, then wince when grimacing hurts. "Awesome," I mutter instead.

"Come on, get in." He opens his door, and then leans on the roof and arches an eyebrow. "And give whoever your clean up crew is a call to come pick these morons up, most of them should be fine in a month or so." He slips into the car, and I stare for a second before jerking into motion and moving to the other door, joining him inside the car.

"You didn't kill any of them did you?" I ask, shutting my door, and he shoots me a look that's somewhere between condescending and irritated.

"No, and you're welcome. Make the damn call."

I wait a second just to feel like I'm not snapping to obey his order, before I reach for my phone as he starts the car up and pulls it into the air. I call Barbara, and raise the phone up to the side of my face that doesn't work.

" _Terry? What is it?_ "

"Hey, Commissioner," I answer, leaning back in my seat a bit. Jason glances at me, looking faintly curious but he doesn't say anything. "I'm not in the suit, but there's a group of Jokerz at the bottom of the road to Wayne manor that could use police and some ambulances."

" _How many? And you're fighting outside the suit?_ " she snaps at me, and I wince and resist the urge to raise my hand and scrub my hand over my face because that will _hurt_.

"Seventeen, and no, it wasn't me. I wasn't involved." I wonder how Barbara would react to Jason being around. I wonder if I should risk it.

" _Do you know who did it?_ "

I hesitate, and then bite back a sigh. "No, I just found them already down. No idea who it was."

" _I'll send the cars. Get home, Terry._ " The line clicks dead, and I shut the phone's screen off and shove it back in my jacket pocket. There's silence for a few seconds, as the road whirs by underneath us, and then Jason tilts his head towards me a bit.

"I appreciate that," he offers, and I shrug. Oh, _bad_ idea. Right, stabbed shoulder that I haven't actually seen to.

"Sure," I answer. "So Bruce is pretty much a stone wall; you going to tell me what the history is between you two? Since I didn't tell the Commissioner about you and all."

Jason flashes a grin at me and snorts. "Oh kid, I'm going to need a cigarette and a lot more convincing than that to go there. You got anything beyond a favor you already did me and didn't ask for advance payment for? Because that's just not going to cut it."

"I guess bringing up that you got me sidelined won't cut it either, huh?" I ask, not really expecting an answer.

The immediately snapped, "No," startles me, and Jason shoots me a critical look. "As far as I'm concerned you shouldn't be on the streets at all. Me hurting you badly enough to get you taken off duty is practically a favor in my eyes, you shouldn't be out there." I open my mouth, and he shoots another _look_ at me. "You argue with me, and I'm dumping you out on the sidewalk, kid."

"Fine," I concede, reluctantly. What else have I got? More importantly, what does Jason want or need? "How about food and a place to stay?"

" _What?_ "

I give a one-armed shrug, taking a glance out the window to gauge where we are. "My family's gone for most of the summer, vacation, so my home's empty. I've pretty much been staying at the manor, but I'm _so_ not staying there tonight. There's more than enough room for a guest, and I've got Bruce's money so it's not like I can't afford buying you food. It's better than stealing cash or squatting, isn't it?"

He gives a low laugh and shakes his head. "Alright, kid. Deal. You let me stay at your place, and you buy me meals, until I figure out how to get back to my own time, and I'll tell you what I know of my history with the old bastard. You going to give me directions?"

"I figured I'd just let you drive until you needed to turn," I say sarcastically, and he barks a short laugh.

"Pain getting to you, kid?"

Actually, hell yes. My shoulder and my ankle burn, my entire face is a mess of throbbing, and just about every other bit of me aches. I'm sore, tired, and however big the shot of adrenaline Bruce gave me to wake me up was, it's wearing off. Even through the suit, Jason pretty much beat me to hell and back. Plus there's not much that the suit actually does to protect me from electrical shocks, besides channeling it basically safely through me and not causing a heart attack or something similar. Repeated shocks pretty much just suck.

But Jason is already convinced that I'm pretty much worthless, and I really don't want to confirm that any more than I already have. I can handle the pain. I'm not going to just fall over and collapse, or pass out. I can _handle_ it.

"The fact you keep calling me 'kid' is," I complain, glaring at him. It's probably not real intimidating with whatever my face looks like, especially considering this is the guy that nearly backed down a group of Jokerz by himself. "I've got a name, _Jason_."

"Impress me and I'll use it," he says, with a seriously blatant challenge in his voice and his eyes as he glances over at me. "You up to that? Kid?"

"You're a real son of a bitch, you know that? Turn left."

He laughs, following the instruction. He's actually pretty much following the speed limits and it's really kind of weird. "Sticks and stones. But for your information, yeah, she was pretty much a bitch. The second one, anyway."

"What happened?" I ask, studying the side of Jason's face. He shrugs, not looking away from the road.

"The short version is I told her I was Robin, and she sold me out to the nearest supervillain who wanted my head on a platter. Saving grace, she kind of forgot to factor in that the Joker isn't someone you can ever trust to keep a deal." His fingers tap against the wheel, almost jittery, and he flashes me a hollow grin. "Get us to your house, kid. Really not up to talk about any of this bullshit while I've got anything else to focus on."

Okay, that sounds like it sucked. I'm also _really_ curious now. Pretty much the only person I know the story of is Tim, and even then it's just how he ended up getting banned from being Robin. All the files on previous Robins are locked to Bruce's voice and code, so I've got no idea who they were before the very little that I know about their careers as heroes. I haven't gotten desperate enough to look them up in public files yet, even though I totally could.

Tim, married and off ignoring anything and everything to do with Bruce; Dick, off in some other city where he left to when he got seriously bitter; and Barbara, married and championing the Gotham police department, and also seriously at odds with Bruce. Two Robins and one Batgirl, and then of course there's the Robin sitting next to me that I never even knew existed, since no one talks about him.

Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, and Jason… what? What's his last name? Well, I guess I'll just add that to my list of questions to ask when we get to my home. Jason's backed off the semi-friendly behavior, and I don't think he's really in the mood to talk. Better that way anyway, I could use a break from talking. The left side of my jaw is starting to seriously hurt whenever I move it, so the less I have to speak right now the better.

Thank _god_ it's summer. My friends would have a field day with this. Max is definitely going to freak out next time she sees me, or stops by. She really hasn't seen me with obvious bruises before; not much hits me hard enough to do this kind of damage. Maybe I can just avoid her until it's not so bad anymore. My Mom would _kill_ me if she saw this. Or maybe she'd kill Bruce. Toss up, really.

I'm not relishing looking in the mirror and seeing how bad I actually look. I'm gonna bet _slagged_ , and it's only going to be worse tomorrow when the bruises have had time to settle. I'm definitely not going to be pretty for a while. Who _knows_ how long it'll be until Bruce lets me back out in the suit? If he does at all.

 _Awesome_.

I guide Jason back to my house with pretty minimal instructions, and he draws in across the street and eases the car down like he _didn't_ just learn to drive one. I guess the crashed car earlier was a test run and he's got it handled now. He shuts the car off, and I open the door on my side and get out as he leans into the backseat for his helmet. I have to lean against the car for a few seconds, squeezing my eyes shut, to shove down the dizziness that threatens to take me to my knees. Oh _slag_ , this is gonna be fun.

His door shuts, and I force myself to straighten up and shut my own door as he circles around the car to stand next to me. He's got his helmet tucked under his left arm, but apart from that and the combo of the sheath and holster on his thighs, he could probably pass as a civilian. With his jacket zipped up the armor on his chest is hidden, and the leg section could be mistaken for normal pants if you didn't look too close. Sure, his clothes don't fit in with regular 'fashion', but I know enough kids that are obsessed with old school things, he could make it work.

Well, if he didn't just _scream_ dangerous with the way he moves, anyway. I wish I could replicate that.

"Lead the way, kid," he says, with a tilt of his head at my building, and I take a glance down the street in both directions before crossing it.

It's a very deserted time of night, so no one is there to see me cringe and maybe even wobble my way across the street, up the stairs, and down the corridor to my apartment door. Except Jason, and he's behind me so I don't have to see whatever reaction he's got to my not-so-smooth walking. Disgust, maybe? I never have to know. I snag the key out of my jacket and swipe it through the lock, shouldering my way in as it beeps and realizing too late that I used my right shoulder out of habit. _Ow_.

I pull together and step aside, tucking the key back away as Jason follows me in. He's silent, head turning as he looks around. "Don't damage anything," I say as he closes the door behind him, "but otherwise make yourself at home. There's my brother's room, my mom's, and the couch. Pick whichever."

"You've got a brother?" Jason asks, as I shrug out of my jacket and fling it across the back of the couch. Which hurts a lot more than I thought it was going to.

"Yeah," I confirm, wincing. "Matt. He's a little bastard, but he's still my brother." Jason sets his helmet down on the floor on this side of the couch, leaning one hip on the back of the cushions as he watches me. "What?" I admit, I probably sound about as grumpy as I feel, even though Jason doesn't really deserve it. Yeah, he beat me to hell and back, but fights happen. He's not my enemy now; that's the important part.

"You got a first aid kit in here somewhere?"

I blink, staring at him, but answer automatically. "Yeah, under the sink in the bathroom. Behind you, door on the right. Why?"

He snorts and straightens up, heading the direction I told him and throwing over his shoulder, "Kid, if you can't fight worth a damn I don't even want to _see_ what you try and do for your shoulder. I'll stitch it up. Sit down somewhere, and take your shirt off."

He's gone before I can counter that idea, and I'm left to just glare after him and debate whether I'm actually going to do what he told me to. I'm not real alright with the idea of letting the guy who stabbed me with my own batarang back at the wound, even if he hasn't been overtly threatening to me since back in the cave. Then again, he's had _every_ chance to kill me and obviously he hasn't. Anyway, if I was _really_ going to keep distrusting him I probably shouldn't have invited him into my home. At this point about the only thing I can think of is that he's been playing me to get me somewhere secure and alone so he can torture information out of me, which is ridiculous. He knows more than I do, and I don't know anything game changing that he wouldn't know too.

I guess I'm just not quite over the fact that he beat the crap out of me.

I reach down and hook the bottom edge of my black shirt with my fingertips, lifting it up. I ease my left arm out first, then carefully pull it over my head. Despite my best efforts it brushes my nose, and _slag_ that hurts. I draw in a sharp breath, recoiling, and then sway at the dizziness that the sharp movement brings. Everything fuzzes out for a second, and when it clears there's a hand at my uninjured shoulder, and I'm on my knees with no memory of how I got there.

"Ah _hell_ ," Jason grumbles, and I can sort of follow it as he sinks to his knees in front of me. It gets a little clearer when there's the snap of gloved fingers in front of my face, and I flinch backwards only to wince and cringe when I get another of the moment-stealing waves of dizziness. "Alright, kid. Up you get." I pretty much just let Jason manhandle me up to my feet, one arm wrapped around my waist and the other hand holding my left wrist to keep my arm laid over his shoulders. I think I hiss a protest, but if I do he doesn't respond. My eyes close, and I lean heavily into his side, sort of helping him carry me but probably not _really_ helping.

I snap back to awareness as Jason drops me onto something that bounces a little underneath my weight and blink up at him, breathing through the part of my mouth. He doesn't look all that pleased, and I fight the urge to cringe as he sits down next to me on — I glance around — my bed and reaches for my face. And promptly grabs my nose.

"Ah! _Ow!_ What the _hell?!_ " His fingers tighten a little when I try and pull away, and the sharp pain brings tears to my eyes so I stop struggling.

"Your nose is broken," he informs me after a few seconds.

"No _shit_ ," I spit back at him, and he snorts. He does something that results in a loud crunch, and a sick shift I can feel all the way to the back of my skull. I draw in a sharp breath, recoiling and he actually lets me go this time. " _Bastard_."

"There, it's set," Jason says, completely ignoring my insult. "You can pass out if you need to. The shoulder will hurt like a bitch, but you don't have to be conscious for it." I raise my left hand to my nose, and then tilt my head back when my fingers come away bloody. Jason elbows me in the ribs. "No, keep your head down. You're messed up enough as it is, I don't need you with blood in your throat too." I glare at him, but I'm still teary-eyed and the world is kind of blurry so I can only really glare in his general direction.

"You've got _no_ bedside manner," I snarl at him, and he laughs.

"What, you want me to be all 'this might sting a little,' and 'now tell me if this hurts?' You wouldn't trust it even if I did, kid." I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, feeling the drip of blood onto the hand I'm holding underneath my nose, so I completely miss him reaching around my back until the shirt hanging on my right shoulder gets yanked off. I make a startled sound of pain as the fabric pulls sharply where it's dried to the wound in my shoulder, and my arm goes out at a weird angle as Jason pulls the shirt totally off. "Here," he says, offering me the shirt. "It's stained anyway, more won't change anything."

I take another second to glare at him, then grab my shirt from his hand and hold it up to my nose. "You could _try_ to be something apart from a bastard."

Jason stands from the bed, heading for the door. "I'm not your nurse," he tells me flatly, "and I'm not here to make you feel better, kid. You want someone to stitch you up and be _nice_ about it, then you're talking to the wrong guy." He vanishes outside, and then reappears a second later with the first aid kit in both hands. "You can stay sitting or lay back, whatever works. I just need room to sit."

Yeah, I'll take that second option. It might be better if I don't have to actually rely on a sense of balance right now, because I definitely don't have one. Maybe if I lay down, the room will stop threatening to spin around me. This is like intoxication from hell; none of the fun side effects to even out the pain and the wobbling world. Probably less chance of throwing up though, so there's that.

I carefully turn, dragging my feet up onto the bed — oh right, and there's the ankle too — and laying back against the pillow and blankets. Well, more accurately I kinda fall the last foot or so, but the bed is soft so it's not like that's a really bad thing. Could be a street, or the floor, a bed's not so bad in comparison. Jason sits down next to me, flipping the first aid kit open, and starts unbuckling his gloves. His hands, when he pulls the gloves off and drops them to the side, aren't the messes that I honestly expected them to be. There are a few small scars over his knuckles, but otherwise they look just fine.

He glances over at me, gaze pointed at my shoulder. "It's not that bad, just messy. You'll be fine; probably won't even scar." I resist the urge to snap at him, closing my eyes for a second and adjusting the cloth under my nose so I can breathe a little easier. "You've got a concussion though."

"You _gave_ me a concussion, you mean," I correct, glaring best I can with the shirt covering most of my lower face. I wish I could even pretend it's something like intimidating, but I am _not_ that naive.

Jason shrugs. "I was proving a point. Don't look for an apology from me, kid. You'll hate me enough tomorrow morning anyway, no need to add to it by expecting something I'm not going to give."

"Just the bruises?" I ask, as he turns back to the first aid kit. My voice is fairly muffled, but I'm pretty sure he must understand me. I'd bet he's got a fair amount of practice at understanding people when they're muffled behind something. "Or are you planning on murdering me or something?"

He flashes a sharp smile at me. "Good night, Wesley, sleep tight. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." What the hell? Did he just straight up go nuts on me? Jason makes a face somewhere between disappointment and irritation. "Seriously? No way, that's a _classic_. Your future is _lame_ , kid." He shakes his head and returns to picking stuff out of the first aid kit. "Like I said, you've got a concussion. Standard procedure, I gotta wake you up every hour to make sure you stay out of a coma. What, never had one before?"

"Not so much," I answer, and he shoots me an incredulous look and then shakes his head. "What?"

"Doesn't matter," he answers, flipping the first aid kit closed and leaning down to set it on the ground. He shifts closer to my shoulder. "You want bedside manner, kid?" he asks, totally rhetorically and with a crooked smirk. "This is going to _hurt_ , try not to move. The faster we're done the faster you can try sleeping, and the faster I can move that stolen car — that's got some of _your_ blood in it — away from being parked in front of your building. Got it?"

I almost grit my teeth, but just give a small nod instead. "Yeah, got it."

Oh, this is going to _suck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you go! Chapter two! I couldn't help that Princess Bride reference, I'm only sort of sorry.
> 
> I'm sure there are things I should be saying here, but for the moment I can't think of anything important. Maybe I'll update this later for clarifications and things, if needed or if I remember anything I really wanted to say. For right now, I hope you enjoyed, reviews are always loved and appreciated, and I'll see you next weekend for the third chapter of this!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome back! I swear I'm still planning on answering everyone's reviews, but I've worked every day since I got back home, and won't have a day off again for... *calculates* four more days. That should be the day I get around to it, unless I come home miraculously not tired.
> 
> The **warnings** for this chapter are: Jason theorizing about some unpleasantness, and being a bit of a dick. Really, that's it. We'll get into the nastier stuff as this goes on (but also the happier stuff!). Enjoy!

Morning comes, eventually. The first hint is the slow relief of the darkness in the kid's room, and the actual morning light finally spills in through the open door about an hour and a half later. Slow; the kid's room must be at an angle where the light doesn't immediately reach it. Lucky little bastard, I still remember the giant windows in the bedrooms at the manor. If you were _really_ lucky, and knew the corner to sleep in, you could probably avoid light in your eyes for about ten minutes. Alfred had this awful habit of opening the curtains in the middle of the night, too, so there was _no_ way to escape.

Part of the old man's eternal quest to make all of us get up before it hit noon. It worked sometimes, if we weren't dead enough to the world to ignore the light, or stubborn enough to bury our heads underneath the pillows.

Guess I should correct myself; it worked on _Bruce_.

Hypocritical, arrogant, old, _bastard_. I've never wanted to kill him as much as I did last night, and I have dreamed about, fantasized, and nearly _tasted_ that particular murder before. God, how can he not _see_ the shit he pulls, and if he does see it how the hell does he live with himself? This kid, Terry, seems like a decent guy. He doesn't like Bruce's bullshit, for one, which instantly kicks him up a notch in my eyes, but he trusts way too quickly, he's got no poker face, and he can't lie worth a damn. Everything he feels is on display, totally obvious to anyone who knows a damn thing about reading expressions.

Worse, but not his _fault_ , he's not trained and is lacking the basic instincts of a vigilante — not talent, he's got that, but he doesn't have the automatic reactions of someone who knows what they're doing, and his pain tolerance is… average.

Either the world has seriously eased up on its standard of supervillains, or the kid's going to die before the year is out. And Bruce isn't _fixing_ it. I understand him putting another kid in the field — I _hate_ it, but I understand it — and I get him being his usual arrogant bastard self, but throwing the kid out there when he's so obviously not trained for it? I don't _understand_ that.

The Bruce I knew would _never_ put a kid in the field that couldn't hold their own, especially without him there to watch their backs. Where the hell was the point where Bruce either stopped caring if his wards died, or gave up on the idea that they _wouldn't?_ What the hell happened between my time and this one? None of this is right, it all screams _bad_ and _wrong_ and just intrinsically _not right_ , and I hate not knowing why it's like that. Forewarned is forearmed, and information and preparation will keep you alive where _nothing_ else will. This feels like being stuck in sensory deprivation, where all I know is whatever I can feel on my skin.

Damn all of this.

I poke the kid awake on the hour mark, ignoring his snarling grumbles and the swat of hands in my general direction with ease. I've done this for every other Bat except the little demon and the old bastard himself, and Tim might sleep like the dead but Dick's got nastier reactions to people shaking him awake. The girls were even worse. Barbs wasn't so bad most of the time, so long as you stripped the bed of weapons first, but Cass and Steph? Never, _ever_ again. Learned that lesson, thanks.

Hourly duty done, the kid back asleep, and my time cleared for another hour, I push my way to my feet and head out into the rest of the apartment. I've already moved and burned the car — no sense letting the kid's blood lead anyone back to me — explored the rest of the apartment, cleaned up when I got really bored, and caught enough sleep between the gaps that I'm really not tired. Besides, being awake at dawn either makes me really tired for no reason, or really antsy. Right now the second one is hitting full force.

It's not worth the risk heading out into the city, nevermind the fact that I could only go as far out as half an hour will take me, and I've got no idea how persistently Bruce is tracking me, or with how advanced a method. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he already knows I'm at his latest kid's home. Wonder if he'll come around spitting threats at me, or do something more drastic like sending the cops in?

No, Bruce would never call the cops on me. If nothing else, he knows I won't let myself get caught, and a lot of them would get hurt for trying. I'm a little better than killing cops, most of the time, but accidents happen, and sometimes people don't get the care they need as fast as they need it. That's not my fault.

Pretty sure that even with how different and _wrong_ this Bruce is from mine, he wouldn't put civilians on the line like that. Especially not after he gets the report of those gang members that I took down, which will be a real obvious clue that I'm pissed and not in the mood to be messed with. It might even help that apparently I'm the equivalent of Satan or something in the future, and Bruce thinks I'm capable and even inclined to things a whole lot worse than I actually am.

Either something really seriously awful happened, or I got driven insane by something. Not far to go, to be fair, but I've pretty much tamped down the pit madness. It's not an issue anymore.

Maybe someone threw me back into the Pit, or mind controlled me, or something else as decidedly fucked up. That, or Bruce did something so absurdly _stupid_ and frustrating that I snapped and went after the Bats again. That, I can totally imagine. Bruce does stupid shit all the time, and most of it I try and ignore but every once in awhile I have to fight back the urge to go scream in his face and try to strangle him. Usually I just bury myself in Roy and Kori until the urge goes away, and if I'm nastier or more short tempered than usual, they let it go.

Roy, at least, knows what it's like to have a disapproving father figure. Though, most of the time, I don't think Roy wants to kill Oliver. Yell at him, sure, or get whatever pound of flesh he's due, but not kill him. Roy's better than that. I'm not.

I need a smoke.

I head to the window in the kid's living room and pull it open, ditching the holster on my left thigh to the ground before I swing that leg outside and press my back against the frame. The fresh air — well, fresh as city air can be — feels good, and I take a deep breath of it and angle my head so the sun isn't directly in my eyes, watching the streets below me. This Gotham is a lot cleaner, even though I'm pretty sure 'cleaner' just means they paved over the things they didn't like. But it's strange, wrong like Bruce, and the kid, and everything else about this future.

For one thing, the civilians have totally lost all sense of how to deal with villains. What the hell happened to the Gotham-wise people who treated hostage situations and criminals in the streets like an everyday thing? When did they stop behaving like that was normal? Where the hell are the criminals, for that matter?

Alright, Bruce's generation of big names is probably mostly dead, considering how old Bruce looks, and maybe the rest are finally actually secured somewhere that will hold them. But what about the younger ones, or new ones? Worlds don't just _stop_ having villains, that's not a thing. Ra's, at least, should still be alive, unless something weird happened. If not him, then Talia should be around somewhere. This version of Gotham feels too quiet; I don't like it.

There's the gang I took apart, I guess. The 'Jokerz,' as they helpfully identified themselves.

Fucking _really?_ The real Joker has to be dead and gone because there's no way that he'd ever let a bunch of lowlife _idiots_ like that use his name. He would have carved them all apart by now. They're just thugs, they didn't even have the decency to _pretend_ they were actual threats outside of the numbers. Even the kid barely blinked an eye at the group he took out, before I took _him_ out.

If I'm stuck here, I have to get the hell out of Gotham. I don't think I'll be able to handle seeing that many mockeries of the psychopath son of a bitch, not regularly. Maybe it felt good to take my frustration out on them, and it _definitely_ felt good to take them all down, but I'll be seeing clowns in my dreams for days, I know it. Luckily the sleep I've snatched between waking the kid up hasn't been long enough for me to really dream. Still, I've got no illusions.

I lift my left leg, balancing it on the ledge of the window with my knee drawn up, countering the shift of weight with pressure from where my right leg is inside the apartment, foot braced against the ground. My hand shakes just a little bit as I retrieve a cigarette from the carton inside my jacket, holding it between two fingers as I also grab the lighter from the same pocket. I haven't lit one of these with a normal lighter in a long time, usually Kori is around and she just snaps her fingers together instead. Maybe lighting these off an alien's ability to make balls of suspicious energy, that might pretty much be the power of the sun, is a bad idea, but no one has ever really credited me with making smart decisions all the time.

Luckily, snapping a lighter really isn't a skill that you forget. I tuck the lighter away and angle my head and the now-lit cigarette so any ash will fall outside of the window. It's not like I give a fuck if the kid doesn't like me smoking in his house — I'm being nice, I opened the window and everything — but I try not to mess up peoples' homes if I don't have to. Especially when they're letting me stay without any real kind of payment, and feeding me on top of it.

The kid's deal was that I tell him who I am and what happened with Bruce, and I'll give him that. I'll give him more than that, actually. He's decent enough, and I get the pissed frustration of Bruce not telling you jack shit. As long as I'm sticking around his house, I'll tell him whatever he wants to know, within reason. Untrained or not, the kid's a Bat at the end of the day. There's not much I could tell him that would do any real damage anyway. Except, maybe, to whatever respect the kid's got for Bruce, and as far as I'm concerned the old bastard doesn't deserve the kid's respect _or_ the trust he seems to have. So, fuck him.

I take a drag off of the cigarette, letting the smoke fill my mouth and enjoying the taste, leaning my head back against the frame of the window. I hold it for a while, then slowly let it back out of my mouth. The taste lingers, clinging to the back of my throat and intensifying as I take in a normal breath of air that's tainted by the smoke.

Habits I never totally shook.

Bruce forced me to quit smoking when he brought me in off the streets, and I took it as a price I had to pay to stay in the manor — _forget_ trying to fool him into missing that I was smoking behind his back, let alone fooling _Alfred_ — but after I died all bets were off. It felt like just one more flipped finger and shouted ' _fuck_ you' at the bastard's memory, and it still helps me calm down. I don't need it like I did when I was fresh from the Pit, when sometimes a cigarette was the only way I could make my hands stop shaking and slow down the racing of my heart, but I still enjoy the act. It's not like I'm going to live long enough to see it fuck me up.

Anyone naive enough to think I'm going to live that long is just plain stupid.

I can't say I'm _surprised_ that Bruce is still alive after however long it's been — the bastard's always been good at being paranoid enough to survive — but I didn't think he'd live past the rest of us. Where the hell is everyone else? Dick, Tim, Damian, Babs, Cass, Steph? Even that _fucking_ dog. Where the hell is everybody who isn't the paranoid old fuck?

My blood runs cold for a second, and I take in a sharp breath that catches in my throat as I squeeze my eyes shut.

 _Please_ , say I didn't kill them. Bruce did mention 'what I'd done' to Tim, Dick, and Babs. God, I hope I didn't kill any of them. That would explain some things though, wouldn't it? Bruce hating me, and them not being around. Maybe even his new disposable attitude towards this kid.

But wait, no, that can't be it. If I'd done something that awful — he also mentioned me crawling out of a grave for the second time, so I must be dead — Bruce wouldn't just have demanded I leave. Not even _Bruce_ is that cold. He would have set the cave's security systems on me and done his best to kill me, wouldn't he? Then again, Bruce has a pretty _awful_ record when it comes to avenging people. I would know.

Still, maybe Bruce didn't give a fuck about me — chose the _fucking_ Joker over me, so there you go — but the rest of them were his _real_ kids. Dick, definitely. The two of them had their fights, but at the end of the day Dick was always going to be the precious golden boy who could do no real wrong. None of us ever mattered to Bruce as much as he did. Especially not me. I _can_ imagine Bruce not avenging him, and it _sickens_ me, but I'd like to think he's at least a little bit better than that. That maybe a second Robin dying — even if Dick left the green shorts behind a while ago — might snap him out of this stupid, bullshit, 'no killing, no matter what' rule.

I take another deep breath of smoke, letting some of it trickle back into my lungs — which still burns a bit, but it's minor — and holding it there until my body starts protesting the lack of air. It's only then that I shove it back out, making sure the stream of smoke is aimed out the window. The sick feeling lingers in my gut, and I _wish_ I could say I'd never kill a Bat, let alone more than one, but I can't. I'm not sure. I hope I didn't, but… I can't count it out as a possibility.

I tap the fingers of my free right hand against my thigh, beating a pattern and keeping track so my mind has something to do, _anything_ to focus on apart from whatever horrible things I might have done. Not that it works.

What could possibly drive me that far? Roy and Kori would try and hold me back, wouldn't they? At the least I'd try and use them to hold _myself_ back, and that's always worked so far. What the hell could Bruce have done — or what was done to _me?_ — that would be bad enough for me to snap that completely? To make me so furious and throw me so far back into pit madness that I'd actually kill a Bat, or more than one?

No. I take a third drag and shake my head, gritting my teeth. That's the worst part, isn't it? If I killed any Bats, then I was in my right mind. Pit madness made me stronger, and gave me a higher ability to ignore pain, but it fucked with my head and my strategy. I was still more than good enough to deal with anyone normal, but I wouldn't have been good enough to take down any of the Bats. If I did this, I had to have done it while I was sane.

If I took out _three_ of them, or everyone but Bruce, then I would have had to be in pretty much the best shape of my life, which I guess I am, but also more ruthless than I think I've ever been before. That's a hard balance to strike, between furious but cold enough to do something like that. There's no way I could have gotten through even a single Bat on just rage. Killing them would have required planning, stalking, and staying out of sight long enough to catch each of them on their own and vulnerable, ideally all within a night or two so there wouldn't be time for anyone to build a real defense.

I've _thought_ about it, and there were definitely times — during the fight for Bruce's position — that I planned it all out on paper and figured out _exactly_ how I'd take Dick, Tim, and Damian down, but I was never going to go through with it. I've _had_ Bats at my mercy before, I've had _most_ of them pinned under a gun and one pull of the trigger away from death, but I never took that last step. I'd like to think I never could.

But what if I was wrong?

The cigarette really isn't the relief I thought it would be — _wanted_ it to be — but I finish it anyway. I want to light another one, but I'm damn well _not_ a chain smoker so I crush the urge. Besides, who knows if there's even still cigarettes around anymore? I'm not down to run out and then find out that they've been replaced with some kind of high tech shit. I'll ration the most of a carton I've got left.

I turn my head to face into the apartment and look up, above the flat screen of the kid's TV, to the digital clock proudly displaying its numbers. I watch the numbers count up, getting closer to the hour, and shove myself off the window's ledge when it shows two minutes to eight. Time for the hourly duty.

I put the cigarette out — the tiny little stub left of it — on the outside ledge of the window, and then flick the last bit of it onto the street below. No one's around anyway, and even if they were why would I give a fuck? What're they gonna do, arrest me? Stare disapprovingly? Yeah right. I'm still pretty obviously not a civilian, even if I took the holster off the thigh I had outside the window so I wasn't _screaming_ that fact, and no one's going to piss off someone who looks like they might stab you. Not even these idiot citizens.

Fuck, I miss _my_ Gotham. I never thought I'd miss Gotham.

I leave the window open — I'm just going straight back to it, so who cares? — and head through the kid's living room and to the door to his bedroom, pushing the door open with one hand. The kid is mostly buried underneath his blankets, halfway curled in on himself and also with his back to me, since lying on his right shoulder is a pretty painful thing for him at the moment. He doesn't stir at the door opening, or when I cross the room to stand over him, but he sure as _shit_ wakes up when I casually grab his injured shoulder and pull him onto his back.

Alright, 'pull' is a gentle word. It's not enough to be called a 'slam,' but there's definitely some force involved. More like a shove or a yank, I guess.

He flails, eyes snapping wide, and yelps as he jerks up. He then pretty much immediately collapses back to the bed again with a low groan, and I let go of his shoulder. It's not like I grabbed it hard enough to make it bleed again, he'll be fine. The kid could use some practice managing pain anyway, if last night was any indication.

Concussions are one thing, and the fuzziness from that was pretty normal. Don't blame him for that. But stitching closed that hole in his shoulder nearly made him scream, and that's just kind of pathetic for anyone calling themselves a hero. Sure, no anesthetic or painkillers or anything like that, and the bruises on his throat and face definitely made holding back the sound way more painful than it should have been, but if the kid really wants to be Batman he needs to be just a little better at taking pain than what I saw last night. That suit is doing more harm to this kid than good, I swear.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," the kid groans, sort of in my general direction, and I flash him a wide grin that's really got more teeth in it than is friendly.

"Sun's up," I inform him, as he shifts, grimaces, and breathes through his teeth. "I'm going to keep waking you up every hour, but whenever you decide to actually get up I'll give you painkillers or something. Tempting to sleep forever, I know, but it's not going to get any better, kid."

"I hate you," he grumbles, prying his eyes open to look up at me.

"Told you." The kid pretty much looks like he took a serious beating, which I guess just means I'm strong enough to get him even through that suit. Point for me.

He's got dark bruising all along the left side of his face, a fairly impressive streak of it across the front of his throat, and his nose is a variety of interesting colors but at least it's straight. It'll suck, and he'll be in pain for a while — also, not real capable of going outside without getting a massive amount of attention — but he'll heal just fine. The shoulder might scar, the graze to his ankle definitely will. Turns out I shaved a chunk of flesh out of it, and close enough to bone that it's pretty much guaranteed to be a scar.

Whatever, it's not like anyone is going to be looking at the kid's ankles, or at least studying them that closely. Besides, it's weird seeing a hero, especially a damn _Robin_ , without any scars. It might be pretty fucked up of me, but knowing he's going to have a couple actually makes me ease a little bit to the idea of him as 'Batman.'

He's _not_ Batman, but maybe he could be. Someday.

"What time is it?" he manages to say, turning his head and then cringing a bit before going completely still. Thought better of the moving, apparently.

"Eight," I answer, and he groans a little louder and almost unconsciously seems to curl into the blankets. "Alright, go back to sleep, kid. See you in an hour." He doesn't answer me, not that I'm really expecting him to, but he doesn't spit curses at me like he did a couple times during the night either, so that's an improvement. I leave the door open a little bit, just in case, and return to my spot in the open window.

I resist the urge to have another cigarette, and end up just studying the skyline instead. I got a pretty good grasp on the city last night, so for something to do I match up where we are in my mental map with what would have been here back in my time, and then continue it with the skyline I can see. Most of it is behind a bunch of other shit, bridges and stuff because apparently in the future we just build _up_ , but some of the old skyscraper locations of downtown Gotham still match up with the massive buildings I can see in the background. It almost works.

It's about five minutes before I hear movement from the kid's bedroom, and I don't bother smothering my grin as I look over and watch him shuffle out from the dark of his room. He looks like a mixture of Dick the golden boy after a night of getting his ass handed to him, and Tim the bastard replacement after a forty-eight hour emergency that he stayed awake for the entirety of. Granted, for Tim, that could be anything from a missing dog to a pile of paperwork. Replacement never was real great at the whole sleeping thing. Basically, the kid looks like the walking dead.

Oh, _great_ way to kill my mood. _Fuck_ my head sometimes.

He glances up at me, squinting at the light and leaning against the wall. I offer him a mocking wave, which he glares at me for, and I see him take a deeper breath and brace himself before straightening up and heading across the empty space between him and the doors and archways on the opposite side of the living room. His hands are clenched, he's limping a bit, and he's really obviously in pain, but he makes it. He veers towards the corridor he pointed me down for the bathroom, and I take a brief glance out the window before speaking.

"If you're going to take a shower — which you probably should — try not to get the stitches wet. At least dry them off really well if you're not going to keep them dry to start with." It's also going to hurt like a bitch to get water on them, but I don't bother telling him that. He'll figure it out, might even wake him up a bit. The faster he's up and moving around, the faster I get breakfast of some kind. I could _probably_ figure out where around his house will deliver something, and maybe even steal or hack whatever kind of currency this future has got, but it's really not worth the effort. I can just wait.

He doesn't answer me, but I get something like a nod before he disappears down the corridor. I can hear the door shut, water start, and count the seconds before a shouted curse echoes down the corridor. The grin that curves my mouth is totally real, and I relax back against the frame of the window and resume my studying of the skyline. There are things I _could_ be doing, maybe even things I should be doing, but I don't think the kid would take that kindly to me rifling through his house. Seems like he might be a private kind of person, or at least a 'don't touch my shit' person. That, I understand.

There aren't any more shouts of pain from the bathroom, and no thuds or sudden crashes, so I ignore the sound of the water and stare out into the city to waste time. Mostly, I just appreciate the chance to feel the air against my face and not have to do anything for a while. There always seems to be some kind of crisis or something, and this isn't my city, it's not a safe place, but I let myself ease into it anyway. When I close my eyes, and lean my head back against the window, it almost feels like my Gotham.

The distant sound of cars — not _quite_ the same, more hum than the engines I know — and the rush of wind that _never_ smells good no matter what. This is a lot better than my Gotham's air, or maybe this is just what the more middle and upper class air smells like. I know it doesn't smell like Crime Alley, or the warehouse districts that I was used to once upon a time. I could almost let myself think that this is one of my safehouses, and the water is some person who shared my bed for the night. Or Dick.

Dick has this irritating habit of breaking into my safehouses to use my showers and eat my food when he's in Gotham. I don't appreciate it, but apart from the traps I put down there's not much I can do about it, and those _never_ stop him. He's too good for that.

There's the slightly louder sound of a car, and I flick my eyes back open to watch a silver one slip down the street and pull up against an empty spot of sidewalk about a half block past me at the next apartment building over. I idly watch it out of my peripheral vision — not worried or interested enough to turn my head — as it shuts off and an older woman with short grey hair, glasses, and a long brown trenchcoat gets out. She moves a little stiffly as she crosses the street, and I stop paying attention. I'm a paranoid fuck, but not paranoid enough to crane my head around to watch some seventy year old lady walk down the street to her apartment.

I close my eyes for a second, taking in another breath of this Gotham's air, and then let it out slowly as I flick my eyes back open. I shift my leg on the window frame, adjusting to get the frame to dig into my back a little less, and that idle movement is the _only_ reason I notice the still figure underneath me. I look down, and—

What the _fuck?!_

I reflexively jerk out of the window at about the same time there's a low whine that sounds electrical, a flash of light, and _pain_ that burns into my lower left side as I roll and fall back into the kid's apartment. I grit my teeth and ignore it for now, reaching high enough up to grab the window and swing it shut again, plastering my back against the wall. Once it's shut and as latched as it's going to get, I pull my jacket away from my side to get a look. Whatever the hell the damn _old lady_ shot me with, it wasn't a gun the way I think of them. That thing definitely _melted_ through my armor and into my skin, and I'm pretty sure that's actually fused to my side now which is going to _suck_ later.

I risk a quick glance up through the window, and the old lady is _gone_ and I do not appreciate this shit.

I snag my gun from the floor, ignoring the holster for now and making damn _absolutely_ sure that the gun is loaded before I get to my feet and take another glance out the window. Still gone, and son of a _bitch_ if she just shot me on sight like that she's either totally crazy or knew I was here. A friend of Bruce's?

As if a friend of his would shoot to kill like that — or I guess it was supposed to be killing, I definitely threw the aim off by dodging — and as if the old bastard has _friends_. No way. Not even Bruce would send someone else to kill me off and do his dirty work for him, especially in his new brat's apartment. He's not that cold. Still, she just _shot me_ without warning or anything, and she knew exactly where I was. If it's not a disguise I just got shot by a fucking _old lady_. Who the hell is she?

I hope none of the other Bats ever hear about this; they'll never let me live it down.

I automatically throw myself to the floor in front of the couch as the front door to the kid's apartment slams open — so apparently you can still kick down a door from the future; good to know — and shove my back against the arm as I take a look around the corner. It's the old lady. _Shit_ , she not only shot me but she knew the exact apartment and booked it up the stairs too? And she's got that damn gun in her hands, and trained pretty much unerringly on me.

"Alright," I call around the edge of the couch, keeping half an eye trained on her and flicking the safety off my gun. If she just takes a few steps forward she can shoot me over the top of the couch, god _damnit_. "I'm not much for taking down old ladies but if you try and _shoot_ me again I will not hold back, you got me?"

The voice that comes back almost sounds familiar, and she doesn't make the slightest move to stop being threatening. "Come out with your hands up and I don't shoot you on sight," she counters.

"You sound like a fucking cop," I complain, as some idle part of my head registers that the sound of the water has stopped.

"I _am_ one," she all but _growls_ at me, and I thunk my head against the arm of the couch as I bare my teeth and roll my eyes in pure frustration.

" _Lovely._ " My voice is pitched just to me, or _I_ thought so, but the old lady gives half a smirk anyway.

"You're not my type, but thanks anyway." Awesome, and I managed to grab the wisecracking cop on top of getting pinned by one at all. You know, I thought I was generally pretty lucky. What the hell happened to that?

I flinch back when she takes a shot at the tiny slice of my head that's poking out from behind the couch. I get out of the way in time — the movement of muscle to pull a trigger is the same, and I've had some _practice_ recognizing that — and recoil as a beam of light slices past me into the carpet and sears a patch of it burned and black. Fucking _great_.

I move, staying low and rolling to the opposite end of the couch's length, and come to the weird realization that I'm planning as if she's going to do what _I_ would if our positions were reversed. Mainly, shoot at my head to cut off my vision and then take those two or three steps to shoot me over the top of the piece of furniture. Why the hell am I planning like she's got my kind of training? Anybody could have taken a shot at me in the window, and landing it just means she's better than average, not that she's got fucking Robin or assassin training.

Things get weirder when instead of coming over the edge where I was, I hear that same low whine and jerk around and in an automatic dodge fast enough to see the shot as it just grazes past the right side of my throat instead of hitting the back of my neck. Fuck, _ouch_.

She's standing mostly behind the couch on the side I moved to, and normally I'd take a shot at her since I'm halfway through spinning around but since she just moved from 'has a dangerous weapon' to 'actually a threat' I decide to dodge that second shot she hasn't quite fired yet. Which she's going to, I'm _sure_. I want to get that damn gun out of her hands first, which normally means go in fast and low, but if she keeps reading me like this I'm going to end up with a face-full of whatever kind of laser things that gun shoots. Not down for that.

She's only about a step and a half away if I stretch my legs out, I could probably—

I abandon the planning, just moving on plain, pure, instinct and slipping sideways and out of the path of her gun as I pull up and to my feet. More of a target but I'll take the advantage of range and movement over being a small target. The gun follows me — she's _fast_ — and she takes a flowing step backwards as her muscles tighten and I spin around the second shot. It still goes uncomfortably closely past my already burned side, but now the couch isn't directly between us and I can close the distance. I'm a good shot, but hand to hand is always going to be my real strength. I let my gun drop on the couch as I move past it — I'm going to need both hands open — and she's matching my forward momentum with backwards but let's see her keep _that_ up. Apartment's not that big and I've got longer legs.

There's the sound of a door slamming open — gotta be the kid — and she flinches but I don't. I take the reaction as opportunity to lunge forwards, only slightly angled with sideways movement so I'm not just charging her gun head on. I get around it, and the kid pops into view in the corridor — with a black robe wrapped around him that _can't_ be his — right about as I grab and twist her wrist to try and get her to drop the gun. She grits her teeth, glaring at me, and does release the gun with that hand to promptly aim and release another shot at me with just her other one. Right into the wound I already have, but I jerk sideways and drag the wrist I've captured with me instead of giving into the urge to shout in pain.

She turns with me, _damn_ her, and the kid gives a shout of surprise and protest as I duck low — the nails on the hand I've captured are raking over what they can reach of the exposed skin of my wrist, which fucking hurts — and manage to snap a kick up high enough to knock the gun from her hand. It goes flying, she somehow twists her wrist out of my grip, and I get a knee coming at my ribs all at about the same time. Now that she's disarmed I have got no issue with pulling back to dodge the knee, especially since I already lost my grip anyway. Not much to lose.

"Woah, _wait!_ " The kid sounds a step away from frantic, and the old lady's eyes narrow but she stays focused on me. Shame.

"Stay out of this, Terry," she snaps, and my mouth curves into a sharp grin as I put together the connections.

"So the old man sent you?" I ask, studying her posture and her positioning, looking for a weakness. "Gotta admit, I didn't think even Bruce would send someone else to do his murder for him."

That's definitely anger that flashes through her eyes, which confirms all those suspicions in my head. Bruce sent her, whoever she is, or at least she knows him well enough to be offended on his behalf. I can see her studying me like I'm studying her, behind the glint of the glasses that might be necessary enough that if I knock them off it could give me the advantage.

"I'm here on my own," she refutes, with what's easy to recognize as irritation and maybe even something like disappointment. "Back down, Jason, don't make this harder than it has to be."

"Back down?" I echo, incredulously. "You shot _me_. You want to maybe take your own advice there? If you think I'm going to just sit off to the side and let you kill me without a fight then you're fucking crazy, and you obviously don't actually know who the fuck I am."

She glares, and beyond her shoulder the kid looks straight up shocked and maybe afraid, hard to totally say with that bruising. "I _always_ ask." She moves first, throwing a kick at my injured side, and I slip out of range of it and watch her pull out what I'm pretty damn sure is a futuristic taser from inside her coat.

Fucking fantastic.

In response I draw my knife and she glances down at it with what I swear looks like disgust. If she knows Bruce the bastard, then maybe she knows whatever it is that I apparently did somewhere between this time and my own. That might explain the killing shot. There's not much that can make an ally of the Bat kill, but apparently I'm the devil or something so _fuck_ the lot of them.

"Wait!" the kid yells, and there's actually something like a command in his voice which _has_ to be a tone he picked up from Bruce. "Commissioner, _stop!_ There's more to this, let's talk, alright?"

Commissioner? Okay, so obviously Jim is dead and gone but…

I take another look, narrowing my eyes a bit as she pauses, focused on me but maybe actually listening to the kid's plea. There's something about her eyes, about the way she's standing, the way she _moves_. Wait, factor in the time difference, aging, and…

"Barbara?" I ask, half incredulously.

Yeah, _has_ to be. She's trained, she's got some kind of ability to predict my moves, and she knows Bruce pretty well. Same color eyes, and these are different glasses but I still remember what those eyes look like behind frames and glass. The more I look at her, the more convinced I am that my guess is right. But then why the _hell_ did she shoot me? Barbara wouldn't kill. Not ever. What the hell happened?

"Drop the knife, Jason," she snaps at me, and I do straighten up a little but I really don't let the knife go. She still feels dangerous, and I trust my instincts pretty religiously.

"Yeah, I don't think so. You shot me; twice, and you _knew_ who I was. How about you drop the taser and _then_ I drop my knife?"

"After what you did to Tim?" her voice is nearly a snarl, and I swear there's _hate_ in her eyes. "I'd be insane. The last time I gave you a chance you put _five_ bullets in me. You're not getting within ten feet unless I've got a weapon, bastard."

Shoot Barbara? No fucking way. I _never_ went after the girls, not even when I was totally fucking insane and out for blood. I'd never do that, _especially_ not after what the Joker did to her — which hey, she's walking again; guess medical procedures get better in the future — and the hell that put her through. If _anyone_ understands my hatred for that psychopath son of a bitch it's Barbara. I can imagine hurting her, maybe even badly, but I'd do it with some goddamn respect. Shooting her would be way too impersonal, and way too likely to be fatal.

"I'd _never_ do that," I argue, flexing my free hand into a fist. "I don't know what kind of fucked up future happens but I _wouldn't_."

"Yeah," she spits, "I heard about your 'thrown through time' excuse. Get off your high horse, Jason. You're a murdering _bastard_ , and you put nearly a whole clip in me before you left me for dead."

I take a step back nearly automatically. Bruce spitting venom at me hurts, but I understand it. I can _deal_. But Barbara? She's never hated me. Then again, I'd never shot her either so there's that. Maybe… If I do that to her, if I do something awful enough that she wants me _dead_ , maybe I do deserve to die. I might hate some of them, sometimes, but the other Bats are still family in the end. I don't usually agree with them, but I respect their opinions and pushing them far enough to kill is… I would have said it wasn't possible.

So maybe I deserve it. Maybe I _more_ than deserve it.

I loosen my hand and let the knife drop from my fingers, and I can see the sharp flash of surprise in Barbara's expression. It slips quickly to wariness, and I wish I could say I don't understand it. If an opponent dropped their weapon I wouldn't just be suspicious of a trick, I'd _expect_ one. If I'm enough of a murderously insane fuck — but still seriously deadly — in the future that they want me dead, and are actually willing to get their hands dirty, she'd be totally nuts to not expect I've got something nasty planned.

"Barbara," I try pitching my voice low, with a hint of pleading because Bats are always suckers for the 'please forgive me' voice, "last I knew I was pretty much on a truce with Bats as a whole. I know you didn't _like_ me, but I was pretty sure nothing could actually make you kill. I'd _really_ appreciate knowing what the hell I did to make you hate me."

Wariness, anger, and finally grudging acceptance. Alright, so she's not going to just tase me. Good.

She comes out of the ready stance a little bit, and I keep my hands open and to the sides. Non-threatening; not going to spook her when I'm finally, maybe, about to get some real answers. I take a second to glance at the kid, and then pray that he keeps his goddamn mouth shut and lets this play through. He should; he seems to have not gotten told much of the backstory and I don't think he's stupid enough to screw up a chance to hear it.

"The Joker took Robin," my blood runs cold, laughter echoes in the back of my mind, and I _shove_ it away because she's still talking, "and you snapped. You tried to kill us all, nearly _did_ , and we were trying to keep Tim together when we got him back but you nearly _broke_ him, Jason. The Joker did _enough_ to him, he didn't need you making him relive it!"

Oh _god_. That psychopathic bastard got a hold of Damian? God, I hate the little demon but no one deserves having that clown work them over, not even him. Not even Bruce. I—

Wait. She said 'Tim.' Keep _Tim_ together. But she also said 'Robin,' without the Replacement's 'Red' in front of it. Tim wouldn't go _back_ to being just Robin, not even if Damian left the role and Bruce offered it back to Tim. Not that the old bastard ever would, and Tim wouldn't take it anyway. He grew out of the role, he got _better_.

So when the _hell_ was Tim going by Robin after my time skip, and when the hell did the Joker get hold of him?

"When did Tim go back to being Robin?" I ask, narrowing my eyes.

" _Never_ ," Barbara snaps. "Don't you understand, Jason? Maybe we could have helped him, but because of _you_ we barely got him back to being sane!" Which is a terrifying thought, but apart from me Tim was always the least stable. The most capable of killing, or snapping under the pressure or the weight of that scary as hell brain of his. But that's _not_ what I was asking.

"No, when did Tim drop the 'Red?' Replacement's a little suck up but he wouldn't go back to being just plain old Robin after graduating. No way."

She just looks confused, and behind her the kid is pretty obviously just as lost. " 'Red?' What are you talking about?"

This doesn't…

"Red Robin?" Nothing. Okay, what else? "Damian? Cass? Steph? Fuck, Babs, tell me you know _any_ of those names."

"Jason, you're not making any sense."

My hands flex, and my mind is running on damn steroids because this _can't_ be happening. How the fuck can Barbara not remember half our family? How can she know me but not remember Cass? _Steph_ , for god's sake? Even Damian the little demon bastard. He might be a shit but I don't know anybody who could forget Damian after meeting him. Something is _wrong_ here, but how the hell do I prove it to them? I guess naming off random names Barbara won't even remember isn't going to do it.

"How many Robins were there?" I demand, letting my hands drop to my sides and trying to ignore the tension in her frame. "How many Batgirls? _Name_ them, Babs. The kid obviously doesn't know shit but _you_ should." This is so _wrong_.

"Jaso—"

"Just fucking _humor_ me, Babs. Please."

She studies me, and I try not to guard my expression, or prepare for a strike, or anything that old memory is making me want to do. If she's not going to just shoot or tase me then I need her to actually know that I'm kinda freaking out, and obviously when I freak out bad shit tends to happen. I tend to kill people, or at least hurt them. I really don't want to, they hate me enough as it is, but if I have to cut my way across the city to find out what the hell happened to the rest of my family, if I have to go _through_ Barbara to do it… I will.

"Dick was the first, then you, then Tim. There was never anyone after Tim, Bruce _couldn't_ put anyone else in danger like that. There's never been any other Batgirl but me, Jason." She actually almost looks worried, like she thinks I'm insane, or hallucinating, or high, or _something_. But I'm not, I _know_ it. There is something very, very wrong here but for once it isn't me.

She _really_ believes there was never a fourth Robin. Or a fifth. Or Spoiler, Black Bat, Batwoman, all the other _crazy_ as fuck people who have gone in and out of our family. How the _hell_ does someone just forget that?

"You seriously don't remember Damian? The little hellspawn demon, Bruce's actual son?" The surprise, and then confusion, is an obvious answer. "Alright, then either somebody seriously fucked up time again or…" It kind of all clicks in my mind, and I tilt my head a bit to the side and take a glance out the window, at Barbara, past her at the kid. "Or this isn't my universe," I finish quietly. "Well, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?"

The kid sways a little, takes a step back to brace against the wall, and Barbara straightens up. I'm pretty sure the kid is just tired — plus the steam from the shower, and the adrenaline from this little face off, probably made him light headed — and it's not a reaction to what I just proposed. Barbara very slowly tucking away the taser on the other hand, even though she keeps her hand in that pocket and doubtless wrapped around it, is totally a reaction.

"Tell me what you're thinking," she demands. "What's the difference?" Yeah, that feels more like the Bat I know. Give everyone a chance, and when people start saying random, crazy bullshit, _listen_. They might actually be serious.

"In my time, and maybe my _world_ if I'm right, Tim is just fine. Bruce kicked him out of the cave to give Damian, his ten year old little demon _shit_ , the Robin name instead, and since Tim's a bit of a passive aggressive bastard he changed his name to Red Robin." I swallow, watching her to see if she's actually believing me, and I _think_ she is. She's guarded, and she looks a little incredulous, but she's not shooting me or lunging at me with anything so at least I've got her attention for now.

"Joker never got him, he's off leading the Teen Titans. I put a knife in him once but we pretty much got over that, and now we trade information back and forth and share a meal every once in a while. Some seriously stupid, crazy shit happened recently and I don't trust Bruce for _shit_ , but we're holding in a truce. I've got my own team; Arsenal and Starfire. I can keep going, but judging by the look on your face that's a _lot_ of stuff that isn't ringing any bells at all. So, different universe?"

Her hand comes back out of her pocket, and she straightens up fully out of the ready stance. I can see her ease out, even underneath that trench coat. Alright, good. We're good. "It sounds like it. We should… talk."

She _really_ doesn't sound comfortable with that idea, and I flash an empty grin on automatic. "You promise not to come at me with anything, and I'll shed my weapons. Deal?" And she damn well better recognize how much of a concession that is for me. Being unarmed — figuratively, anyway; she's totally crazy if she thinks I'm actually going to dig into all my hidden pockets and pull _everything_ out — is a major source of discomfort for me. It's right up there with getting my hands bound behind my back or getting locked inside something dark and confining.

I can deal, I mastered my own fears — most of them, anyway — a long time ago, but I don't _like_ it. Knowing how to deal with fear isn't the same as not feeling it.

"Deal," she agrees. "I promise not to shoot, stab, or otherwise injure you as long as we're talking." It might come out grudging, but at least it's something. Her teeth grit together, her eyes narrow, and then she smooths whatever the hell caused that expression and it slips away. "Terry, grab the first aid kit," she aims over her shoulder, without looking away from me. "I shot you, Jason; I'll treat it."

Ah, that's the face.

"Alright," I agree, and slowly bend down to pick my knife up off the ground. "Deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, the bad news is this is the last chapter I have pre-written. The good news, is I know exactly what happens next. XD In fact, I have most of this story planned out (except an ending, _naturally_ ). So, here you get a few more hints about what exactly Jason did in the BB universe. Is it clear yet that we're not following canon in regards to Jason? 'Cause we're really, really not. Mostly because there is no canon BB Jason.
> 
> So, I'll see you all next week for... something or other. I haven't decided yet. XD


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